Chaos Unleashed: Part One
by E4me100
Summary: Typical scenario, but NOT a typical story. The Fellowship's come to modern-day Earth, and Erin, Kaia, and Kathryn couldn't be more excited...but will it remain a dream come true forever? Sure, there'll be plenty of laughs and good times along the way...but no one knows how things are going to end up. And sometimes it's best for it to remain that way. Self-inserts. Give it a chance!
1. Early Struggles

**A/N: Hello, hello, hello, my lovely readers! :D Welcome to my new fanfic! As some of you may have heard already, this is a companion fic to _The Changing Destinies Series_, so your three favorite girls will be returning for another crazy adventure. ;) Before we get started, though, there are a couple things I want to point out to you guys. These things should be kept in mind throughout the entire story to help you maybe understand everything a bit better.**

**~This is NOT to be treated as a sequel/prequel/whatever the frick else-quel to _Changing Destinies_. As in, pretend that whole series never happened. Our trio has no memory of it happening, so it won't be anything like that (though I'll probably reference it a couple times here and there for giggles).**

**~This story will be split into two fanfics, Part 1 and Part 2. **

**~It's my intention to make this story a LOT less romance-centered than _Changing Destinies_. Don't get me wrong, I'm still very proud of that fic, but I'd like to take this one in a different direction and focus on strengthening other areas. There will be _some_, but not a ton of romance in here.**

**~And, as always, I guarantee you that this story will be another crazy, plot-twisting, wild, totally unpredictable adventure that (hopefully) you'll fall in love with. :3**

**~*As a final word: This fanfiction is dedicated to the wonderfully amazing Kathryn, who I'm lucky enough to call my best friend. Happy birthday, bbz. ;)*~**

Chaos Unleashed: Part 1

_...Oh! Well, hello there! Have you come to hear the story as well? Ahh, of course you have. All the visitors I have come for the very same reason, as you might've guessed. Not that I could blame them...it is most certainly a tale worth telling. You may take your coat and hat off and leave them by the door, if you'd like, and take a seat! It will be awhile before we're finished here._

_So...how much do you want to know? Or, I suppose a better question is...how much are you prepared to hear? Because believe me, young one, there are far too many times in this world where people ask for the truth, the whole of it, even when it is kept hidden from them for good reason. And then when they can't get it, they go hunting and searching and digging around to get as much truth as they can...but when they find out the entirety of it, they regret ever sticking their noses into anything at all. They know things that they should never have known, and it spoils some (or all) of the innocence and naivete they once had._

_Is that something you are willing to risk?_

_If the answer is no, then perhaps you should keep your coat and hat on and be on your merry way. I will not judge you, if that is your choice. You may return any time you like, and I will be here to tell you the truth. All of it. _

_...But I see that yours have not moved from where they've been hung, now have they? Is that your choice, then? To hear the tale in its full, honest glory? Then I will keep you waiting no longer. Ahem!_

"_Our story begins in a way one would not expect at all. In fact, the adventure itself was started by complete accident..."_

Chapter One

Kaia's POV

"OH MY GOD, NO! YOU BASTARD! YOU JUST TEAM KILLED ME!" I furiously brushed my bangs out of my eyes and mashed the hard plastic button furiously. "Respawn! For the love of God, just GET UP!" I screamed, feeling moisture gathering on my palms from how intensely I'd been focused.

"Jesus, Kaia!" I heard another voice shout at me from the kitchen. "Calm down! It's only another game of Halo!"

"It's not 'only another game of Halo,' Kathryn!" I shot back, still incredibly pissed that I'd gotten the idiot players lumped onto my team again. "I've gotta get revenge on this prick! He needs to be put in his place!" Thankfully, I was brought back at full health onto the battlefield a second later, and wasted no time in making a beeline for the flag that was being held by the other team. "Come on...No! Holy mother of Hayley, how the hell do they keep dodging that?" I set my jaw and then switched to a more strategic way to recapture the flag in order to get the points back that our team needed. It was working for awhile...until I got distracted and some idiot hit me with a grenade..._again_. "GOD DAMN!"

"What now?" Kathryn's voice was right above me, so I figured she was watching the gameplay over my shoulder. "Oh, why'd you die? You had the perfect chance to get the flag back!"

"I know!" I groaned, exasperated. As I waited for the short, yet agonizingly long handful of seconds it would take for me to respawn once more, I tipped my head back to see Kathryn shooting me a look. "What?"

"Gimme the controller," she said, "and let me take over for a second."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah. It's not like I've never played before. And besides, you still gotta put the trash out anyway."

"Ugh. Fine." I shoved the smooth controller into Kathryn's pale hands as she jumped over the back of the couch and plopped down onto it, then got up and went through the next-door dining room which connected to the kitchen. I quickly managed to haul the filled garbage bag by the back door out of its trash can and around the side of our shared townhouse, setting it out front for the garbagemen to pick up the next morning. Before heading back inside, I glanced up and down the street, frowning when I saw no cars approaching. _Where is she? She's never usually this late. _Not thinking much else of it, I turned and ran back up the front sidewalk, onto the porch, and through the front door, my bare feet softly padding against the ground as I went.

"YES!" I stepped into the game room to find Kathryn throwing her head back and throwing both fists in the air repeatedly.

I walked up behind her, looked at the TV screen, and then flipped an invisible table when I saw that our team had won, thanks to her. "How the hell did you do that?"

She laughed, winking one of her dark brown eyes at me. "I was just born with the skills."

"But I play Halo more than you ever have!"

"Sucks to suck."

We both laughed at that, and though I was sorely tempted to punch her at the insult, I let it slide. "Hey, when's dinner gonna be done?"

"It is done," she said. "It's sitting on the stove to keep it warm until Erin gets home."

"I thought she would've wanted to get home early today. Isn't she supposed to finally hear back from that one college she wanted to go to really badly?"

Kathryn nodded and shut off the console, along with the TV. "Asbury, right? Yeah, a letter did come from there addressed to her this afternoon." She left the room and went back into the kitchen, and I proceeded to ungracefully throw my body across the plush couch again and whip out my iPod. Between the three of us girls each having steady jobs and enough extra money in all our bank accounts, we'd managed to rent out both sides of a fairly big townhouse, which gave us almost the same amount of space to live in that you'd get out of any regular two-story house. On the side that Kathryn and I shared, we had our kitchen, a small dining room, a living room that we'd devoted entirely to the storage of all our video games and other nerdy merchandise (the game room), a very small foyer, and a small bathroom. Erin's side was symmetrical to ours, only the living room in her half was actually a normal living room, and the kitchen and dining area over there was rarely (if ever) used. Upstairs, Kathryn and I had both of our bedrooms, a small storage closet, a slightly larger bathroom with a shower, and the spare guest room that I'd converted into my own personal music room. On Erin's upper half, she had her room, a guest room that hadn't been renovated, a bathroom with a shower, the same storage closet, and the second small bedroom that she'd transformed into an art studio.

We'd managed to snag the place right before the three of us graduated high school last year, and since I'd fulfilled my high school dream of becoming the lead singer of a rock band and had no desire to go to college yet, I'd been living here happily with my two best friends ever since. Kathryn still had no clue what she even wanted to do for a career yet, so she was also unschooled. Erin was the only one of us who'd been trying to get into a good college from the beginning, but for whatever reason, it wasn't happening. It was weird, too. Erin had always been a straight-A student in school and was a good kid, so none of us could really figure out why she hadn't gotten accepted into any colleges. Or at least, Kat and I were clueless. If Erin knew anything, she hadn't told us.

But in any event, this is how our lives were. I was employed at Spencer's in our local mall, as well as the money I got from my band's gigs. Erin wasn't too far away from me, as she worked at the Gamestop in the same mall. She was also an artist as a side job, and was often doing commissions for various people. Kathryn worked at a nice little family owned restaurant in another part of town, but she also babysat for some extra money, too. We'd all managed to live on our own here just fine for about a year now, so money wasn't really a worry of ours.

Suddenly, my phone beeped loudly from where it was shoved in my pocket, and I pulled it out to find a text from Trent, the bassist of my band. I was just about to read it when the front door banged open, and I lifted my eyes from the glowing screen to see Erin walk into the game room, clad in her black Gamestop uniform shirt and dark blue skinny jeans. She kicked off her low-top black Converse and nodded at me. "Hey."

"Hey," I replied, my deep brown eyes sliding back to my phone. "You're home late."

"Yeah, sorry about that," she said. I could hear her come over and plop down on her favorite purple beanbag chair in the Nintendo-themed corner of the room. "Jared had to stop at the general store and grab something." Jared was a friend of Erin's that worked with her at Gamestop and took her to and from work when Kathryn and I weren't able to. Erin had never felt the desire to get her driver's license, but obviously she could still get around perfectly fine.

"Ahh." I frowned a bit as I stared at Trent's text. "Hey, do you think the band could come over tomorrow afternoon for a meeting? Apparently Trent wants to discuss some stuff."

"I don't care." I looked up at Erin as she shrugged.

Just then, Kathryn stuck her head in the doorway. "Were you guys planning on eating sometime this year? This spaghetti's not gonna be warm forever."

At the sound of food, Erin and I both immediately got up and went to claim our rewards. Kathryn had already gotten hers and was sitting at the table, and Erin and I waited until she'd said grace before moving to fill our plates.

"So," Erin said from behind me, "any plans for tonight?"

"Not really." I plopped some noodles onto the paper plate. "I figured we'd all just hang out. I don't have anything to do."

"Same here," Kathryn called back to us. "Maybe we could watch a movie?"

"Maybe," Erin said nonchalantly. The two of us quickly got our dinner and sat with Kathryn, silence filling the room for a few minutes as we ate.

Kathryn was the one who broke it when we were about halfway finished. "Oh! Erin, your letter from Asbury came in the mail today."

Erin's green eyes lit up with interest. "Asbury? It came today?" Kathryn nodded as she reached behind her to grab the envelope off of the counter, and Erin shoveled another large bite of pasta into her mouth before ripping it open and scanning the paper quickly. We all waited in silence, holding our breath in anticipation. Erin read through the letter, frowned a bit halfway through, then groaned in exasperation and threw it down onto the table. "I give up."

Kathryn and I shared similar expressions. "You didn't get in?" I asked.

"No," she said dejectedly. "And I don't understand why! It can't be this hard to get into college. Seriously!" She propped her head up with her fist and absentmindedly twirled her noodles with her fork.

"Hey, don't worry about it," Kathryn said in an effort to comfort her. "You'll find the right school eventually."

"That's what we said a year ago," Erin pointed out.

Now I spoke up. "Erin, it's not a big deal. Just keep doing what you've been doing so far and keep applying. If colleges aren't smart enough to accept you, then that's their loss."

Erin sighed and looked at me briefly, as if she was about to say something more, but she remained silent. Her eyes dropped to the letter laying on the table, then flicked to her plate, then to the letter again before she got up from the table and grabbed her unfinished spaghetti, taking the letter and crumpling it up a bit before dropping it in her saucy leftovers. "It is a big deal to me, though. You guys know that."

I glanced at Kathryn as Erin walked over and dumped it all into the trash. Even after a year, her reaction was the same. Slightly pissed and not wanting to talk about it any more. Without another word, she left the kitchen, and a few seconds later we heard the front door open and shut as she went over to her side of the house.

Now Kathryn exhaled as she finished the last of her meal. "You'd think that by now she'd know not to get her hopes up."

I sent a mild glare her way. "It's not her fault that she can't get accepted anywhere."

"But she's applied to so many by now!"

My gaze softened. "...I know," I said quietly. I looked at her empty chair as I continued to pick at my own food. "Hopefully we can figure out what's going on soon enough."

**A/N: Well, that's the end of the first chapter! ^^ I actually wasn't planning on ending things off here, but...I need to sleep. XD Sorry if this one bores you, guys. D: This first chapter was just a lot of introductions and explaining things, I know. But I want you guys to have a good idea of where the girls are at in this story and how they live together and all that. Speaking of which...if any of you are confused about that part, let me know and I can try and explain it a bit better. :) Sorry if I sucked at doing it in this chapter. XD Hope ya like it anyway! If I don't have any homework, I should be able to upload the next chapter tomorrow night, so...until then? *shrugs***

**Don't forget to review!**

**~Erin**


	2. The Big Bang Theory

**A/N: Aaaaaand here we go with chapter 2! :D Hopefully you guys liked the last one and are ready to get into the story a lot more! :)**

**In response to an unnamed guest who reviewed: In this fanfic, the girls have been out of high school for a year. Though I'll probably say this in the future at some point, I'll tell you now that they're all 19 years old. In _Changing Destinies_, they're still in school (as juniors, I believe? So that would make them all about 17 there). So, to answer your question...technically, this fic comes after the other series, but remember: In this fanfic, _Changing Destinies_ does not exist. It was never written. The girls have never been to Middle-Earth or anything like that. Hopefully I cleared things up a bit instead of just confusing you even more. XD**

**On with the fic! :D**

Chaos Unleashed: Chapter Two

Erin's POV

I shoved my house key into the small lock, twisted it, and quickly entered the tiny foyer of my half of our shared home. Without pausing to take off my shoes (or even turn any lights on, for that matter), I passed through our living room and headed upstairs, immediately making a left, heading down a short section of hallway, then another right before slipping into my favorite room in the entire complex and kicking the door closed behind me. I finally paused to take a breath, my eyes scanning the semi-dark room momentarily before reaching to my left and flicking on the lights.

Within an instant, the bulbs in the ceiling lit up to reveal a room that was ridiculously disorganized, with various things strewn across the floor, missing from their places on shelves, and a pile threatening to spill over next to an equally messy work desk. These things included both blank and painted-on canvases of multiple sizes, bottles of paint, brushes, colored pencils, sticks of graphite and pastels, paper, and more. This was the art studio, also known as the room that I spent about seventy-five percent of my time in. I moved over to my art desk, being careful not to step on anything important, and plopped into the black seat, pushing several papers aside to reveal my purple Hewlett Packard laptop hidden underneath.

It didn't take me long to turn it on and ensure that it was plugged into the small, but fairly high-quality speakers and sub-woofer that I had, and a few moments later my iTunes was up and running, with the song "O God Save Us All" by the rock band Disciple ringing out loudly. I bobbed my head in time to the beat, humming along through the first verse as I dug around on the desk until I found a pencil and eraser, then propped my feet up on the bass speaker that vibrated with every note and grabbed a nearby drawing to work on.

"Misguided...divided...we have nowhere left to fall! O God save us all!" I sang along with the lead singer as lead moved across paper. It was a sketch of two figures, one being an older male who was crouched down on one knee and lightly gripping the shoulder of the other; a much younger boy who was grabbing at the elder's hand in fear. Eventually, these two forms would become King Thranduil and a young Legolas in a scene where Legolas was begging his father to stay behind before the Elvenking rode out to battle somewhere. "Mistaken...forsaken...with our backs against the wall! O God save us all!" I trailed off as the second verse kicked in, focusing on drawing the hands of Thranduil correctly.

...Or at least, I tried. After only a minute, my mind wandered back to the letter from Asbury rejecting my application. I sighed as I continued to work, thinking about Kathryn and Kaia next door. I knew that they were both concerned with the fact that I couldn't get accepted anywhere, but...if only they knew the whole of it.

Growing up, I'd never been in an incredibly poor or incredibly rich family. I was an only child of two parents who'd been blessed with steady jobs, and we'd always been in the middle class as far as money was concerned. Never had any problems or anything unexpected, and before I graduated high school, my parents both promised that they would help out with paying for my tuition as much as they could. Obviously, I'd planned for just that – to pick up a job somewhere near where I would be going to school and then work my way through college, with assistance from my folks when I could get it.

Sadly, that was not to be. Kaia and Kathryn thought that the reason I wasn't going to college was because I couldn't get accepted anywhere, but...the truth was that I'd actually gotten accepted to all but three out of the several schools I'd applied to in the past year, including Asbury. The problem was that now I couldn't pay for it.

Just before the end of my senior year, our family bank account was somehow hacked into, and the majority of our money was stolen. Thankfully, the thief left just enough of it behind for my parents to still be able to support themselves...but there was just no way they would be able to help me pay for college at all anymore. This was one of the biggest reasons I'd moved out to live with Kaia and Kathryn. My parents literally couldn't afford to have me around anymore. I'd never told another soul of my motives, mostly because I didn't want them taking pity on me and paying for a bunch of my stuff. I'd been doing okay on my own for awhile, but now because of the financial issues with my parents, I was unable to go to any of the colleges that I'd been looking forward to attending.

Suddenly, the lead of my pencil snapped, bringing me out of my thoughts. I looked down at the paper and frowned. "Of course the anatomy isn't right," I mumbled as a new song started playing. "Because we just can't have that." I exhaled as the song "Release the Panic" by RED rang out and started erasing parts of the sketch.

As I worked and sang along with Michael Barnes' incredible vocals, I glanced at the clock. _6:30. _Then I glanced out the studio's front window, smiling a bit when I saw that the sun hadn't even set yet. _I'm so ready for summer. _We had a bunch of events lined up to attend over the three months that I loved the most, and I was beyond ready to start. Sadly, though, it was only the second day of May. I still had about a month before anything major happened.

I turned my head back to my picture and nodded, finally satisfied with the how the figures looked. As I began drawing the details of Legolas' face, I turned up the volume of the music slightly and sang along as loudly as I could. "Cause you're trapped in the countdown...and your days are numbered...Don't you know that you're done for? Right now, lights out, let your panic out!"

oOo

_An hour later..._

Kathryn's POV

"YOU...SHALL NOT...PASS!"

I grinned and did a little fist pump as Gandalf slammed the bottom of his staff into the stone bridge on the TV screen and cheered as the Balrog fell to his doom. "Yeah, Gandalf! You show him who's boss!"

Kaia laughed from where she was stretched out on our couch, though she also winced slightly as we watched the old wizard get his ankle snagged by the demon's whip of fire and was dragged to the edge of the crumbled stone so that he was just barely hanging on with the tips of his fingers. "Oooh...sucks to suck."

I glanced at her. "Would you really say that if he was about to die right in front of you?"

"I totally would," she said sarcastically, laughing even more. "...Dude, we're horrible people. We're laughing and making jokes as an innocent old man dies right in front of us."

I cracked a smile at that. "Hey, you're the one who's laughing. I'm actually sitting over here and watching the movie like a normal person."

"That's the boring way," she scoffed. "My way's so much better. And besides, you know that he comes back anyway."

"That doesn't make laughing at someone's death okay!"

"Doesn't it?"

"Kaia!"

These were the conversations we often had while watching movies like the beloved _Lord of the Rings _trilogy. Erin was just about the biggest nerd for all things Tolkien that I'd ever known, and a couple years ago she'd managed to drag the two of us down with her. Kaia and I were currently watching the extended edition of _The Fellowship of the Ring_, as Erin was (regrettably) still locked away in the art studio above us, working away.

_Speaking of her... _I glanced up at the ceiling, particularly the spot where I knew her sub-woofer sat on the floor. Erin had never been one for soft music, so even now, with the movie playing fairly loudly, we could faintly hear the deep pounding of the bass from above. "You know, I'm kinda worried about her."

"Who, Erin?" Kaia asked. I nodded. "Yeah...me too. I can't remember the last time I've heard her say no to watching these."

"I know," I said. "Do you really think it's just because of that one college not accepting her?"

My dark-skinned friend shook her head, her straightened blackish hair messily flying around. "No...there's gotta be something else. I mean, you know Erin. She wouldn't let that one thing get her down."

I shrugged and looked back to the TV as the Fellowship entered the woods of Lothlórien. "I'm not gonna bug her about it, though. That probably won't help."

"Oh yeah, I know," Kaia said quickly. "I wasn't gonna ask her unless it got worse. Maybe she just had a bad day at work or something."

I nodded. _That makes more sense. _"Cool. Now shut up! This is one of the best parts!"

oOo

Erin's POV

I smiled as I filled in the remaining spot of blank canvas with acrylic paint, then leaned back in my chair a bit to view my work. I'd just about finished a painting of the Fellowship that I'd been working on for a few weeks now, and I'd been inspired to finally try and finish it when I'd heard Kaia and Kathryn running the first of the three movies downstairs. The complete recordings from the same movie was playing in the studio now, though I wasn't as far along as they were. I was currently at the point of the story where the Council of Elrond took place, and when last I'd listened to the others, they'd been somewhere in Lórien.

_Maybe I should paint that next, _I thought, mixing up a custom golden color to add a few final touches to the One Ring that rested openly on Frodo's chest. I glanced at my own spot-on replica of the small golden band that I'd bought off of Ebay not long ago, complete with elvish inscription carved into the metal.

Just as I moved my eyes back to the canvas, the music took on a darker tone, and I recognized it as the bit where Gandalf spoke the Black Speech written on the Ring during the meeting in Rivendell. I spoke the words along with the voice of the Istari that I heard in my head as I continued to paint. "_Ash nazg durbatulùk, ash nazg gimbatul, ash nazg thrakatulùk...agh burzum-ishi krimpatul!_" I laughed softly to myself and went to dip my brush back into the blob of paint on my palette.

Suddenly, just as the soundtrack swelled to its loudest and most intense point, the room went pitch dark, and I frowned, pausing my music. "Oh, what the fuck?" I heard Kaia's muffled yell from below. "Erin, what did you do?"

"I don't know!" I shouted back, laying my tools down before getting up and running to open the studio's door. "What happened?"

"Hell if I know!" was her response.

I rolled my eyes. "Then just run down to the basement and flip it back on!" I sighed. "Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one in this house who thinks logically," I mumbled. _Maybe it was my music? _I smirked. _Guess the house couldn't handle that much awesome without blowing a fuse. _I turned to go sit back down and wait for the power to come back on.

When I turned around, though, I froze in the doorway to my room. My Ring was still sitting in the exact same spot on my desk that I'd left it, but...what was it doing? The lettering...it...it was glowing! I did a double-take to make sure I wasn't seeing things, but there it was. The script glowed brightly in the semi-darkness brought on by the sunset, casting a flame-red reflection of the lettering around the room like the actual Ring did in the movie. "...Guys..." I called warily over my shoulder. "...Guys! Come here!"

"What?" I heard the pounding of feet as they ran up the stairs, and Kathryn's voice grew louder as she approached me. "Erin, what-" She too stopped and stared at my Ring, and it took a few seconds for her to find her voice again. The text was glowing brighter now, almost blindingly so. "Oh my God...what's it doing?"

"I don't know!" I squeaked, genuinely freaked out at this point. I snapped my head in her direction and grabbed her shoulder. "Is it gonna explode or something?"

Kathryn groaned. "See? This is why I told you not to buy stuff off of Ebay! But no, you just couldn't take my advice..."

I opened my mouth to retort, when suddenly there was a loud _bang_ that resembled a gunshot, making both of us jump, and the light from the Ring disappeared, almost like the glowing text itself had blown a fuse. Kathryn screamed a tiny bit and grabbed my upper arm tightly, and not a second later, we heard a loud _thud_ from another room nearby, like something had fallen.

The two of us slowly turned to stare at each other for a minute, now even more afraid of what was going on. "Kaia?" I shouted. "You okay?"

"Yeah!" I could barely hear her, so I figured she was still down in the basement. "Did I do that? Sorry, guys!"

"No, you're good!" I reassured her. I glanced back at my Ring before turning to Kathryn again, who still hadn't let go of my arm. "What was that other noise, though? It sounded like it came from the closet or something."

Her eyes went wide. "Oh God...don't tell me you're gonna go over and look in the closet."

"Well, what else should I do?"

"You get as far away from that closet as possible!" she hissed. "Haven't you ever seen any horror movies?!"

I rolled my eyes. "Kathryn, there's not gonna be some random monster that popped up in our closet. Chill out."

"You don't know that!"

"Then I'll go find out," I said, pulling myself free of her grip and walking off down the hall.

"Erin!" Kathryn whispered. I didn't even have to look back to envision her still frozen in place at the doorway to the studio. "Erin, get back here!"

"No!" I whispered back.

"Fine then! But if some crazy chainsaw murderer jumps out and kills you...then I told you so!"

I just shook my head and rounded the corner, coming up to the closed closet door. The lights still weren't on, and it was quickly getting darker now that the sun had finally slipped below the horizon. Just as I reached out to grab the knob, though. I paused. _Is that...voices I hear in there? The frick? _I swallowed. Kathryn's prediction of a monster in the closet suddenly didn't seem so ridiculous. _But no, it couldn't be a monster...could it? _I hesitated as I barely registered hearing the sounds of movement inside. _Oh crap...what if there really is something in there waiting to eat my face off? _Then I realized how dumb I sounded. _Okay Erin, come on. Grow a pair and just open the freaking door. _I took a breath, then shot my hand out and yanked the door open as quickly as I could, preparing myself for the worst. What I did not expect at all was to have a ton of bodies come flying out, about to land right on top of me. I screamed and jumped back. _OH FRICK THERE'S BODIES IN MY CLOSET WHAT IF THEY'RE CORPSES OF THE PREVIOUS OWNERS OF THE HOUSE OH MY FRICKING FRICK-_

_ ...Wait. Those are definitely NOT dead bodies. They're moving. And groaning. They're definitely alive. _I stood completely still in the half-darkness, unable to identify the people. That is, until they started talking.

"Is everyone all right?"

"What in the name of the Valar happened?"

"Aragorn, where are we?"

"Is the food still here? I'm hungry."

"Pippin! Shh!"

The minute the people started talking and getting to their feet, I swear on all that is good and pure in the world that my heart stopped beating. Because there, slowly standing up one by one in my hallway, was the Fellowship of the Ring.

I didn't say a single thing as they started doing a quick head count to make sure they had everyone with them. I guess they didn't notice me right away, because I was kind of standing in a shadowed area. I just stared openly at them, my brain not being able to process what was happening. _What...how the...the Fellowship...they're...what...what..._

Suddenly, there was a muffled shout of triumph from the basement, and the lights automatically flickered back on, revealing me to them. Boromir was the first one to spot me, and he immediately drew his sword and gave a shout, causing all the others to focus on me and also draw their weapons while forming a protective semi-circle around the hobbits. Within seconds, I was staring cross-eyed at the tip of Legolas' arrow.

"Who are you, and are you friend or foe?" Aragorn said sharply.

"I-I...I..." I stuttered, still unable to speak.

Then Kathryn decided to make her entrance. "Erin? What's going on? Who's out here?" All eyes turned to her as she stepped around the corner, also freezing in place as her jaw went slack. She gawked at them for a full ten seconds before speaking. "WHAT THE HELL?! What are they doing here? They...T-They're not real!" At that exclamation, several of the men shot each other confused glances.

"K-Kathryn!" I shouted. "Shush! And I don't know! I'm asking myself the same question?"

She looked at me like someone had asked her to complete a college senior's physics exam. "Wait, is this who was in your closet?" I nodded. "...But...But that makes no sense!"

"I know!" I cried. "I have no idea what's going on?"

Of course, Kaia was drawn upstairs by our shouts, too. "Guys, what are you yelling about? I can hear you from down in the – HOLY MOTHER OF GOD!" she yelled, jumping back a bit when Boromir swung the tip of his sword to her heck. "W...Wait, the Fellowship? What the fuck are they doing here? How...Erin, what the shit did you do?"

"I didn't do anything!" I said. "I'm just as confused as you two!"

"But I don't-"

"Silence!" All eyes turned to Aragorn, who'd shouted the command. He eyed all three of us suspiciously. "I do not know what you women speak of, but clearly something has gone wrong. Would you please explain to us where we are and how we got here?"

"We have no idea how you got here," Kathryn piped up.

"Then simply telling us where in Middle-Earth we are will suffice."

The three of us shared looks of uncertainty with each other. How were we gonna explain this one?


	3. Fangirl Problems

**A/N: WOOOOOOAAAAAAAH MAN. The Fellowship's in modern-day Earth! BET YOU'VE NEVER SEEN THAT IN A STORY BEFORE GUIZE LOL.**

**Okay, but in all seriousness...I promised you in the first chapter that this story would be unique and have lots of unexpected twists and turns and all that jazz. I realize that the whole "Fellowship comes to Earth" has been done before, but...I like taking these kinds of popular (overused?) storylines and doing my own version of them. So please don't give up on this story and start rolling your eyes and going "Oh wow. I've already read a million fanfics like this." I promise you, it'll get better. Just you wait. ;)**

Chaos Unleashed: Chapter Three

Kaia's POV

"...and that's literally all I can tell you." Erin crossed her arms over her stomach as she finished speaking, and my eye roamed over the eight men who were now spread out across our living room as the information sunk in. We'd spent the past hour hauling them downstairs, introducing ourselves, and explaining what was going on as best as we could (though Erin had done most of the talking). We'd had to go into great detail when it came to telling the Fellowship about how _Lord of the Rings_ was just a fantasy story here, and that there were movies showing their entire adventure across Middle-Earth, and that they weren't in their beloved homeland anymore. That led to a series of questions about where they were, which led to another in-depth explanation about Earth and how it was different from Middle-Earth, and that there were no elves or dwarves or hobbits or wizards here; only men.

We'd also let the Fellowship talk for a bit, and they gave us as much information as they could, too. For starters, we realized that Gandalf wasn't with them at all. He hadn't appeared in the closet upstairs, and he certainly wasn't with us now. Apparently the guys had "popped into our closet," as Merry put it, just a few days after they'd left Lothlórien via boating down the Great River. I was pretty confused, to say the least, and I'm sure Erin and Kathryn felt the same way at this point.

After the long moment of silence, Aragorn spoke up. "...But that makes no sense," he said, looking at Erin in disbelief. "How is it that we just...arrived here? What could've caused that?"

"I have no clue," Erin said. "I'm just as lost as you are, I swear." I was at least happy that we'd managed to convince them that we were cool and not some freaky spies of Sauron that were gonna rip them limb from limb pretty quickly.

"Well then what do we do?" Now Boromir was talking. "We cannot just sit here idly! What of Middle-Earth and those we left behind? What will happen to them?"

Erin opened her mouth to speak again, but she was cut off by Gimli. "He's right," the dwarf said, looking at his companions. "We set out to destroy the Ring, and we've got to do it! We can't just let Sauron have his way while we've gone missing! He'll be unstoppable!"

As soon as he said it, the tension in the room increased tenfold. "Now, hang on a minute-" Erin began.

"We can't let that happen!" Pippin cried. "What about all the others? Will they be all right?"

"We have to go back!" Merry agreed, and the others gave their nods and murmurs of approval. Then the blonde hobbit looked to us again. "...We can go back...can't we?"

Erin let out a breath, then glanced over to me pleadingly. I took the hint and answered them to give her a break from talking. "We don't know," I said seriously. "There might be a way for you all to go back, and there might not. But no matter what, I can guarantee you that you won't be going anywhere tonight...maybe even for a few days."

Boromir instantly objected to this. "But we must get back somehow!"

"I understand that!" I said, snapping my head in his direction. "But as you know, none of us girls have any idea how you guys got here in the first place. So obviously we wouldn't know how to get you home." The redheaded man still seemed unsettled, so I softened my tone slightly. "I understand that you need to return as soon as possible, Boromir, but we can't make that happen right away. You'll just have to be patient."

"And that is something we can do," Aragorn replied with a nod to me. Some of the others shot him questioning glances at this, but no one else spoke against him. On the inside, I smirked. _Guess we know who's in charge here._

"Thank you," Erin said. "That helps us out a lot."

Another brief moment of silence passed before Frodo then spoke up. "...If we are going to be stuck here for awhile...then what's to be done?"

"Well, if you guys don't mind," Erin said in response, "I'd like to talk with them about it in private." She pointed a finger at Kat and I. "Excuse us for a second." She then motioned for both of us to follow her out of the living room, through the dining room, and finally into the kitchen on her side of the house.

Erin's POV

I jumped up and sat on the smooth white counter top that was hardly ever used and turned to face my friends. Kathryn closed the door behind her as she slipped in, and she and Kaia stood apart so that we were in a triangle-sort of formation. "Well!" I said. "We now have a band of eight men in our house who have no idea how Earth works, and we can't send them home. What do we do?"

"Obviously they're gonna have to stay here," Kathryn said immediately. "I mean, we can't just throw them out on the streets."

I smiled a bit. "Yeah, because I would totally do that to the Fellowship. But seriously! Yes, they'll have to stay here. However, that means we've got some arrangements to make. They all need places to sleep, modern clothes to wear...we'll need to teach them the basics of modern life so that they're not totally clueless..." I trailed off, trying to think of all the main issues we had to fix.

"We should probably do something about their hair and all," Kaia said, "because if they all went to Wal-Mart looking like that, I'm pretty sure someone would recognize them and we'd be screwed."

I bit my lip slightly. "Oh frick, Legolas is gonna be hard to work with. He's gonna have to constantly hide his ears."

Kathryn nodded. "And the hobbits probably won't be too happy about having to wear shoes."

"And I'm sure Gimli'll be pissed when we tell him he might have to trim his beard at least a little bit," Kaia added. Then she leaned her head back and groaned. "Oh, God. This is gonna be a nightmare."

I laughed openly at that. "A nightmare? Dude, we've got the Fellowship of the Ring in our house! Do you realize how awesome that is? And so what if we've got a couple problems right now? They'll adjust. They've got no other choice."

"Says Miss Optimist over here," Kaia replied. "What about when we have to teach them all how to use the bathroom? There's no way in hell I'm doing that."

I couldn't help but cringe a bit at that. "Good point. But still! It'll be fun, just wait." I gave her a knowing smile before getting serious again. "Now first we gotta deal with the most important issue, which is getting them all settled in somewhere. Thank God we have both sides of this townhouse to work with."

"Yeah," Kathryn said. "That's good. But I don't think we should all work on the same thing at once. We should split up and take care of different problems all at once to make things go faster."

"Good thinking," I said. "Okay, let's do that, then. Kaia, are you cool with taking care of figuring out the sleeping arrangements?"

She nodded as she reached behind her head and pulled out her disheveled ponytail. "Yeah."

"Awesome. Kathryn, are you okay with making a run to Wal-Mart and trying to get them all at least one complete outfit to wear?"

"Uhh, how am I gonna know what sizes they are?"

"Just make a guess," I said. "You've seen how tall they are and stuff. Try your best, and keep all the receipts. If stuff doesn't fit, we'll take it back, and then once they all have one basic outfit to wear, then we can go on a bigger shopping trip and take them with us to pick out more stuff."

She shrugged. "Mmkay. I'll give it a shot."

"Sweet. Thanks. And while you guys are taking care of that...I'll be labeling stuff."

Both of my housemates' eyebrows shot up at this. "The fuck? What are you talking about?" Kaia asked.

"I'm gonna label, like...everything in this house that they don't know the name of," I said. "To help them learn easier. Trust me, it should work."

"Keyword: '_should_.'"

"Hey, shut up," I said to her. "Unless you've got a better idea."

She just sighed and shook her head. "Whatever, then. Go for it, man."

I smiled again. "Okay. I think that'll be enough to get us through tonight. We can give them a tour of the house and explain how things work and all that in the morning." I turned to Kathryn again. "If you leave now, do you think you could be back here with the clothes in...half an hour?"

"Are you crazy?" she laughed. "If I'm blindly guessing their sizes, it'll take me longer than that. I'm thinking an hour would be okay."

I thought about that. "...All right. Do that. You know where your keys are, right?"

She was already on her way out of the kitchen. "Yeah, I got it!"

I looked at Kaia, who was also heading out. "I'll make the list up in my room, okay?"

"Gotcha."

She smirked as we headed back out the way we'd come. "You're in charge, Erin...so don't fuck it up."

I laughed. "No promises."

As soon as we stepped back into the living room, all eyes turned our way. Kaia nodded to them once before continuing on out of the house so she could get over to her side and get up to her room. I could tell that the men had all been talking about something from the way they were semi-huddled together, but I brushed it off. It wasn't any of my business, anyway. "Where's she going?" Pippin asked as Kaia disappeared from sight. "And Miss Kathryn, too! Why are they leaving?"

"I'll explain everything," I said, holding up a hand to stop the questions. "Just bear with me for a bit longer." I paused and took a breath before beginning. "Okay. Since none of us know how to get you guys back to Middle-Earth at the moment, we've decided that it would be best for you to just live here with us for now." Almost all of the Fellowship stiffened, muttered something to another, or reacted in some way. The only two that just continued to calmly stare at me were Aragorn and Legolas. "I realize that this'll be hard for you, but you really don't have any other choice. We're going to do all we can to help you adjust to this world, learn our 'customs' and whatnot...everything. Kathryn just went out to buy you guys a couple new things to wear, because obviously we dress way different here than you do in Middle-Earth." I gestured to my own outfit which was now a simple grey tank top and skinny jeans. _And to think, they haven't even seen what most girls wear these days. _"Kaia's working on picking out rooms for you all to sleep in, which brings me to my next point. We should be able to squeeze you all in somewhere, but you'll definitely all be sharing a room with at least one other person. That won't be much of an issue for you, right?" No one said a word. "Awesome."

"Lady Erin." Legolas spoke up, and I looked at him. _Good lord, his eyes are blue. _"As generous as your offer is, I must ask...how long we would be staying here?"

I shrugged and shook my head. "I don't know. It could be a couple days...could be a couple weeks...could be a couple months, even. But this is what we've got to do either way." More murmurs from the men. "Again, I'm really sorry for overwhelming you guys with all this, but we'll do our best to make you as comfortable here as possible."

"Then...where do we start?" Merry asked.

I thought about that for a second. _Hmm...what could we do while we wait for Kaia and Kathryn? _"Oh!" I snapped my fingers. "I know! The first thing I'll need you to do is remove all of your weapons."

This got me several skeptical and wary stares, particularly from Gimli and Boromir. "And why should we do that?" the dwarf piped up, his dark eyes narrowing dangerously.

"Gimli," Aragorn said quietly, but sternly. "Now is not the time. These women have very graciously allowed us to be their guests for as long as is needed, and we must trust them just as we trust each other." He then turned back to me, unhooking his belt which carried his sword and hunting knife. Reluctantly, the others followed his lead. "What do we do with them?" the ranger asked.

I smiled. "Just come with me. I'll show you where we'll keep them." With that, I turned and started up the stairs again, hearing the footsteps of the eight others behind me as we went. I stopped in front of the door to the upper storage closet they'd fallen out of. I stepped inside and cleared a couple boxes of junk away before coming back out. "You can arrange them in there however you want them," I said. "I can bet that you won't have any use for your weapons for awhile, but if you would ever need them, you know where they are."

The men nodded in response, and one by one, each member of the Fellowship stepped forward and set his weapons in the closet wherever they fit. They still seemed uneasy about leaving their only means of defense in there, but no one protested. "And another thing you should know is that we don't refer to others as 'Lord' or 'Lady' here. You pretty much always refer to people by their regular name, but I'll explain the exceptions to that later," I said. "So to you guys, I'm not 'Lady Erin.' I'm just 'Erin." They nodded to show that they understood. After a moment of silence, I spoke again. "...Uhh...any other questions about how stuff works here?"

Immediately, Pippin's hand shot up. "Do you still eat food here?"

I couldn't help but laugh a bit. "Yeah, we still eat food. Kathryn's usually the one that does the cooking around here, and some of the stuff she makes will be a bit strange to you, but I think you'll like it anyway. She's a pretty good cook."

Now Merry spoke up. "Do you have biscuits on Earth? And sausages?"

I nodded. "Yup."

"What about carrots?"

"Uh-huh."

"And mushrooms?" Pippin cut in, looking hopeful.

I smiled a bit. "Yes, we do have mushrooms." This got the attention of all four hobbits, who shared excited looks with each other, eyes as big as the state of Texas.

Suddenly, the bang of our front door slamming shut sounded loudly from downstairs, making almost all the guys jump. "Erin!" I heard Kaia shout. "I figured everything out!"

"That's our cue to head back downstairs," I said. "Come on!" I quickly slipped past the others and headed down into the living room again, our new house guests trailing behind me.

Once I stepped onto the carpeted floor, Kaia turned around. "Oh, there you are." As we all crowded into the room, she held up a piece of paper with red ink scribbled onto it. "I think I've got it."

"Well then let's hear it!" I said, turning around to look at the Fellowship. "You guys can sit down wherever you want."

After giving them a moment to get settled, Kaia took her place in front of the TV again and began. I stepped back so that I was behind everyone else and absentmindedly started tracing my finger over a landscape painting I'd done and hung up on the wall awhile back. "Okay. Gimli, Pippin, and Merry will be right over there-" I glanced over my shoulder to see her point "-in our unused dining room. We'll have to move the table and chairs around so that you guys have enough space, but it should work." I pulled my phone out of my pocket as she continued, checking the time. _It's almost nine thirty. _

"Frodo and Sam, you'll be in Kathryn's bedroom, which is upstairs on the other side of the house." Now I'd slid the phone open and was typing away, preparing a message for Kathryn asking when she'd be back.

"Boromir and Aragorn, you two will share the guest room upstairs, right above the dining room." I selected Kathryn's name for the message to be sent to, quickly reading over it to make sure I hadn't made any stupid spelling errors. _Aaaaaand...send._

"And that leaves you, Legolas. You'll be in Erin's room."

My phone dropped straight from my hand and hit the floor, causing every head in the room to turn in my direction...including the elf, who was eying me curiously. "Uhh...s-sorry," I said, already feeling my face getting hot. "Dropped my phone." I laughed nervously as I reached down and picked it up, then quickly shoved it back into my pocket. As I looked back at Kaia, though, I noticed something that made me want to punch her in the face. _She's smiling. She's friking __smiling__. ...Oh my word, she planned this. That dirty little-_

"Kaia, are you sure that these...arrangements are entirely proper?" Legolas asked, turning back to face my friend, who still had that look in her eye that told me she was dying of laughter on the inside.

_ I'm gonna kill her. _"Yes, Kaia! Are you sure that's entirely proper?" I repeated, clenching my fists and shooting her a glare.

She looked like she was barely holding it together. "We don't worry so much about what's proper here," she said in response. "It's no big deal."

_NO BIG DEAL?! _I groaned internally. _Why did I put her in charge of this? I'm stupid. I'm such an idiot. _But for the moment, I just had to swallow my embarrassment and act like nothing was wrong. "All right! I guess that's what we'll do, then!" I stared Kaia down for two more seconds before smiling sweetly at the others. "I'll go get the upstairs rooms ready. Kaia, why don't you come help me?"

"Okay. It shouldn't take us long, guys, so just wait here for a minute." She still had a smug grin on her face as the two of us disappeared up the stairs. I didn't stop to turn around and look at her until we got to the art studio. As soon as she shut the door behind her, though, I spun on my heel and let her have it.

"Really, Kaia? _Really?_" I hissed. "You seriously put Legolas, of all people, in my room?"

She laughed openly now. "Why wouldn't I? Oh God, you should've seen your face!" She laughed ever harder. "It was perfect!"

My shoulders dropped as I asked the dreaded question. "You're not gonna keep doing this the whole time they're here, are you?"

"Erin, come on," she said, calming down and looking at me seriously. For a second my hopes were raised a little bit...until she cracked a mischievous grin again. "What kind of friend would I be if I let you live in peace?"

I rolled my eyes. "A good one," I muttered.

Kaia just laughed again. "Don't deny your undying love, Erin!" she said, pretending to over-dramatically swoon.

"Shut up."

"You'll never get anywhere with him if you deny it!"

"Shut up!" I could feel my cheeks burning again as I stepped around her.

"Come on, Erin!" She jumped in front of me again, blocking the door. "You can't look me in the eyes and say that you don't want that d."

"Why do I live with you?!" I shrieked, shoving her out of the way and yanking the door open. Her hysterical laughter followed me as I bolted down the hallway and into my bedroom.

Just seconds after I'd slammed the door shut, I heard a _thud _as Kaia rammed into it, then the sound of her fists pounding on the door. "Erinnnn! You can't hide forever!"

_If they hear her downstairs...holy balls, I'll murder her. _"Shut your face!"

"Why are you hiding in your room, Erin? Huh?" I bet she was tearing up from how hard she was laughing. "Why you hiding from me?"

I kicked the door with my heel. "Go get the guest room ready!" Thankfully, she finally moved on and left me to myself. Once I was sure that she'd walked away, I groaned and slid down the door until my butt hit the ground, then buried my bright red face in my knees. "Oh, man...when Kathryn gets home, there'll be twice as much of this crap... I'll never hear the end of it!" I wasn't seriously pissed off at Kaia or about to cry or anything. I knew she was just joking around, but...good Lord, putting Legolas in my room was just about the worst thing she could've done to me, and she knew it. Why? Well...

...Okay. Anyone who knew me knew that I was a pretty obsessive Lord of the Rings fan. That was obvious. But anyone who _really_ knew me knew of my, ah...tendency to favor a certain Mirkwood prince over the other characters. It wasn't to the point of being creepy or anything, but...honestly, this is Orlando Bloom we're talking about. And in my eyes, he'll always be the most perfect man on the face of the earth.

So what was my problem, then? Well, my problem was that in my room, I just so happened to have quite a bit of Lord of the Rings merchandise scattered everywhere, and a good chunk of it was Legolas-centered. There was a poster of him as he appeared in _The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug_, two other posters of him from _The Fellowship of the Ring _and _The Return of the King_, a big portrait of him that I'd drawn as a sophomore in high school, a figurine of him from _The Hobbit, _a special limited edition poster of him, Aragorn, and Gimli from _The Two Towers_, three random Legolas trading cards that I'd indefinitely borrowed from a friend, and (my personal favorite) a cheap, but pretty good quality replica of his twin white knives that sat on top of my bookshelf. Besides all that, I had a handmade replica of Sting and the Fellowship's leaf brooch from a Frodo cosplay I'd done awhile ago, a poster with a mishmash of characters from all three movies, a collage of the One Ring that I'd done, and my Hobbit-themed popcorn bucket from when I'd gone to see the premiere of _An Unexpected Journey _with my friends (which I now used to store a bunch of spare art materials in).

Needless to say...I couldn't have Legolas in here. Not when his face was plastered all over the walls, anyway. So I picked myself up off the ground and began the heartbreaking task of taking down all my posters that would make me seem like a stalker. It didn't take me long, as I left some of the normal _Lord of the Rings_ fangirl stuff where it was...but the Legolas posters were rolled up, the knives taken down, the figurine and cards gathered up, and everything that could fit was stuck into a small cardboard box that I dug out from inside my closet. I quickly grabbed a Sharpie and scribbled 'Erin's Crap' in large letters on all four sides, then grabbed it and started off towards the hallway, picking up my posters as well.

As I stepped out of my room, I saw that Kaia had just finished up with the guest room and was standing in the hallway waiting for me. Once she saw what I carried, she frowned. "Erin, what the hell are you doing?"

"Getting my room ready. After all, I don't want him feeling uncomfortable."

She raised an eyebrow, confused, then stuck her head in my doorway to see what I'd done. "Seriously, bro? What the fuck?"

I made it to my destination and flung open the closet door, smiling as I heard the disappointment in her voice. "Oh, I'm sorry, did I ruin your fun?" I laughed. I moved aside Legolas' quiver, knives, and bow, as well as Gimli's axes, and set my box on top of the pile of spare junk we kept in there. The posters were set next to the box, and I repositioned their weapons so that nothing would smash them.

When I turned around and shut the door again, Kaia was right in front of me, shaking her head in disbelief. "Really? Nice."

I glared at her again. "Don't think I'm on friendly terms with you, woman. I almost cried doing that." We both laughed a bit before turning and heading back towards the stairs.

As we started to descend them, Kaia leaned in close to my ear. "...But I know you still want that d, Erin."

_FML._

**Another quick A/N because I can: I'm so so so sorry it took me so long to write this ajfhjakshfwk ;A; I made it longer than normal as payment, so...hopefully you guys like this chapter. It took me forever to figure out how I wanted that beginning to go. ;_; (And it doesn't help that I've recently become a fan of a guy named Pewdiepie on YouTube, so I'm constantly watching his videos when I should be writing. Are there any other bros out there? ;D)**

**Not sure when the next chapter will be up. :I I'm still adjusting to the new semester, and I might have to go back to the doctors if this dumb ear infection doesn't go away soon, so...yeah.**

**I'M SO DONE WITH JANUARY. D:**


	4. Adjusting Isn't Gonna Be So Easy

**A/N: I'm so sorry guys. ;_; I really need to update faster. I'm so so so so so sorry. **

**Thanks to Kathryn for relentlessly pushing me to update. I love you guuuurl~**

***Also: Chapter 3 had replaced my letter of apology, in case some of you didn't realize it. :3 So make sure you read that, too.**

Chaos Unleashed: Chapter Two

Kathryn's POV

As I pulled up into our driveway, I glanced in the rear view mirror and sighed as the three shopping bags full of clothes stared back at me. "This had better work, 'cause I'm not going back to return all this crap anytime soon," I grumbled as I climbed out of my light blue car and opened the back door to pull everything out. Once all the bags were hooked around my arms, I kicked the door of the old thing shut and went up to the house, heading into the half that Kaia and I shared and dropping the bags on the small couch in our game room. The walls and carpet were both a fairly dark color, giving the room a closed-in, den-like feel to it. We had a pretty decent-sized collection of consoles and games that we'd each just taken with us when we'd moved out. Erin brought her Wii and 3DS, I had my Playstation 3,and Kaia donated her Playstation 2, GameCube, Xbox, GameBoy Advance, DS Lite, and DSi.A collection of game-related posters, figurines, and other merchandise served as the decorations scattered around the room.

I plopped down on a purple beanbag chair in the appropriately dubbed "Nintendo corner" and shot Erin a text to let her know I was home. Glancing back at the bags, I tried to remember what all I'd bought. _Wait, did I get enough shoes for them? Crap, I don't think I did. I hope I did. _My dark brown eyes roamed aimlessly around the room.

A few seconds later the front door banged open, and in through the foyer door came Erin, with the Fellowship and Kaia in tow. They all filed into the dark room, with the eyes of the newbies going wide with interest and confusion as they saw all the technology around them. "Hey," I said with a small wave.

"Hey gurl," Erin said in a silly voice, though I noticed that it didn't seem wholehearted. "Did you get everything?"

"You'd better hope so," I replied, and she laughed a bit as I stood up.

Kaia ungracefully flopped down onto another beanbag, this one dark red. "Take it away, then."

"Mmkay." I then looked to the Fellowship, who were all just sort of standing together behind the couch. A couple of them were already eying the shopping bags curiously. "Well," I began, " if you're gonna be living here with us for God knows how long, you're gonna have to be able to blend in a dress like everybody else. So..." I leaned over and reached into the first bag and pulled out two polo shirts, one a dark greyish-blue, and the other an apple red. I tossed the former to Boromir and the latter to Aragorn. "One for you, one for you..." They both caught them and examined the foreign material. Then I pulled out a dark grey v-neck t-shirt and gave it to Legolas. "That one's yours..." A black t-shirt with the AC/DC logo on the front went to Gimli. "And this is for you...and then..." Lastly, four more lightweight t-shirts came out, three of them solid light blue, brown, and navy colors, and the last one being black with deep purple stripes. "There," I said. "Those will be your shirts for now."

Legolas frowned and looked up at me. "You wear nothing underneath this?"

"Nope." I shook my head. "Just that."

"No...no armor?"

I saw Kaia snicker a bit out of the corner of my eye, as did the elf, and he glared at her a bit. "No, we don't wear armor here."

Several eyes bugged out at that, and now Boromir was staring at me like I was crazy. "You mean...everyone just walks around with no protection on at all?"

"Exactly." I had to admit, the looks on their faces were kind of funny. They looked so hopelessly lost.

Then Gimli piped up from where he stood squinting at his shirt. "Whose army bears this symbol?" He lifted it up so the others could see, and they all started murmuring amongst themselves as they read it and tried to figure it out.

I rolled my eyes. "It's not an army's symbol, it's the name of an old band. They-"

"What's a band?" Pippin interrupted.

I facepalmed. "Oh my God."

"Should we be prepared for an attack?" Aragorn asked immediately

Legolas tested out the new word. "Are you a part of this...this 'band?'"

Then Boromir scowled at the shirt like it was cursed. "Are they allied with Sauron?"

At that, Kaia burst out laughing, and I glared at her over my shoulder. _Shut up_, I mouthed. Then I turned around to the others and held up a hand. "No more questions about the shirts! We're not done yet." I went to the second bag and began pulling out the various pairs of pants I'd gotten for them, smirking a bit when I remembered one of my favorite things that I'd purchased. _He's gonna kill me. _"Okay, we've got...shorts for Aragorn, light blue jeans for Boromir..." I handed the pants to each individual and went on. "Cargo pants for Gimli...jeans that will hopefully fit all the hobbits..." When I spotted the final item that remained in the back, my mischievous grin widened, and I looked up at the only one who remained with only a shirt in his hands. "And then..." I carefully watched Erin and Kaia as I pulled out the purchase of the night. "...Some lovely light grey skinny jeans for you, Legolas."

"OH MY GOD!" Erin screamed, clapping a hand over her mouth and putting a hand out to lean up against the wall as she practically doubled over with laughter.

"You didn't!" Kaia said, shaking. "Holy fuck, you did. I love you. Kathryn, you're perfect!" I couldn't even answer them with any more than a nod. We'd all absolutely lost it.

The blonde elf was holding the pants and staring at them, brow furrowed in confusion. "...I do not understand. What...What is so humorous about these?" That got Erin and Kaia laughing all over again, while the others just looked at them like they'd grown another head. Legolas looked back at me. "...What do you call them again?"

I held back more laughter. "Skinny jeans."

"Skinny jeans," he repeated, and I nodded. "All right..." He glanced over at the girls. "Why are they-"

"Hang on..." I said. "Just...Just give me a sec." I laughed a bit more and then put on a straight face as best as I could, preparing for the reaction I'd get. "They're laughing because..." I could hardly bring myself to say it. "...Because they're supposed to be pants for women."

If I could accurately describe the look on Legolas' face, I would. But there's no way I could even come close to getting it right. His eyes went wide for a second in confusion, then shock, and then his expression completely changed to anger as he realized what I'd said. "...I beg your pardon?"

Erin was on the floor. Kaia couldn't even look at the elf without tearing up. And as I looked around at the other members of the Fellowship, even they were finding it funny now. Gimli was laughing openly at the prince, and Boromir couldn't hide his grin. The hobbits were stifling giggles, and even Aragorn was struggling to keep a serious face. "You heard me," I said with a grin. "Women's. Pants."

When I said it out loud again, the laughter increased a bit, and Legolas shot death glares around the room, particularly at Gimli. He then dropped the pants on the couch and stepped back. "I am sorry, Kathryn, but I refuse to wear those."

"Oh, c'mon," I said. "They're not so bad."

Kaia calmed down a tiny bit. "I promise, we won't make fun of you."

"I bet you'd look great," I said, giving him a genuine smile this time.

But then the dwarf spoke up again and ruined everything. "Take 'em, laddie! Ask the girls, I'm sure they're fantastic!" The room erupted into laughter again.

I swear, I saw his ears go red. He looked so pissed. "I am _not _putting those on."

"You'll have to eventually," Kaia teased. "You won't be able to wear anything else tomorrow."

Legolas stared at her for a minute, then looked at me, then at the jeans for a long time. Finally, he sighed, stepped forward, and grabbed the pants off of the back of the couch, drawing laughter from several of us once more. He refused to look anyone in the eye and leaned up against the back wall, arms crossed, glaring at his feet.

After another moment, we all settled down enough for me to dish out the last thing: shoes. "And here's the last basic thing you'll all need." I went to the third bag and pulled out a cheap but durable pair of Vans that I'd managed to snag from a clearance rack. "Legolas, these are yours." He still looked at me bitterly as he took them. "Aragorn, Gimli, I grabbed some sneakers for you guys...Boromir, you too..." Then I pulled out the only shoes that I though I'd be able to convince the hobbits to wear. "And then there's these flip-flops for you guys." I tossed each of them an identical brown pair.

Merry frowned as he caught them. "...Why do we have these?"

"You have to wear them," I said. "You're not allowed to walk around everywhere with bare feet in our world."

Instantly, their faces dropped. "What?" Frodo asked.

I nodded. "Yeah. You guys are gonna have to start wearing shoes...and while you're at it, we should probably teach you how to shave." I glanced pointedly down at their furry feet.

Sam had an indignant look. "Now wait just a minute! Will all due respect, Miss Kathryn-"

"It's just Kathryn," I corrected him.

"Yes. Kathryn. We...we have to wear these things all the time?" He shook one in the air.

"Anytime you go out somewhere, yeah," I said. "Sorry guys." Pippin pouted and immediately started grumbling to Merry about how he didn't like this new world's clothes, and Sam just continued to stare at his shoes like they were the spawn of Satan. Frodo was really the only one who seemed to be able to deal with the fact that they'd be wearing shoes now.

"So, is that everything?" Kaia asked from her place across the room.

I nodded. "That's all I got for now. I was thinking tomorrow we could just get them all showered, dressed, and then take everybody out shopping again for a couple more things. That way they can pick out stuff they actually like."

"How are we gonna pay for all this?"

"Well, everything here I found on clearance, so it actually wasn't that expensive. We'll just have to do a little digging."

Erin walked a bit closer and nodded. "Sounds good. What time were you planning on doing that tomorrow? You know I have to work."

"Yeah, I know," I said, "but I was planning on doing it first thing in the morning. Like, right after breakfast."

Erin frowned, but shrugged. "Oh well. I guess I'll have to miss out on that." She then turned and looked at the Fellowship. "You guys wanna go do more clothes shopping at the mall tomorrow?"

"What's a mall?" Pippin asked.

"I'll take that as a yes," she said, turning back around. "Wait, so when were you planning on teaching them how to use showers and stuff?"

"And we're gonna have to cut their hair and all that before we take them out anywhere, too," Kaia pointed out.

"Ugh," I groaned. "Fine. I guess we'll have to do that tonight, too."

Suddenly, Erin frowned. "Wait a sec...Kathryn, you said that's all you got them? Just like, the pants, shoes, and shirts?"

"Yeah," I said. "Why?"

"Frick!" She started laughing a bit. "Then you didn't get any of them boxers?"

Realization hit me like a semi-truck. "Ooooh...yeah. I forgot about that."

Now Kaia was laughing, too. "Way to go."

"Genius Kathryn strikes again!" Erin teased, tilting her chin up and making a weird face.

"Shut up," I said, lightly smacking her. "We can...just do that tomorrow, I guess."

"That's gonna be so awkward in the morning," Kaia said.

"Dude, I know!" Erin looked at her. "What do they even wear if they don't wear boxers?"

"I dunno. Like...medieval-style briefs or something?"

"Or maybe they just wear nothing at all."

"Oh God, that's gotta be so uncomfortable!"

"I know! Or what if they-"

In the middle of her sentence, Erin was cut off by someone loudly clearing their throat. We all slowly turned and looked at Aragorn, who had a 'wtf' expression. "Are you ladies aware that we can hear your conversation?"

The three of us just awkwardly stared back at him for a moment. "...Well...we do now," I said quietly. I assumed none of them knew what boxers were, but by the looks on a few of their faces, they'd figured it out. I coughed uneasily and spoke to everyone. "Then you must've heard our plans for tomorrow and the rest of the evening, right?"

"Yes, you said something about us showering and buying more things to wear tomorrow morning."

I nodded. "Yeah. But, uhh...here's the thing." I looked to Erin and Kaia, hoping that they'd be cool enough to explain this part to them, but of course, they both just looked away and left me on my own. _You little shits,_ I thought. "...Besides having to dress like the people here, there's...well, you can't exactly get away with the hairstyles that you guys have. At least, some of you can't."

oOo

Kaia's POV

"This is ridiculous!" Boromir had his arms crossed over his chest and was fuming. "I refuse to go through with this!"

"I'm sorry, Boromir, I really am," Kathryn said from the other side of our tiny bathroom.

I laughed. "I'm not!" I snipped the scissors intimidatingly and locked eyes with him in the mirror. "Ready?"

"No."

"Excellent." With that, I began carefully cutting away at his ginger hair in an effort to make him look more normal. His hair wasn't really all that bad to begin with, but if I just trimmed it so that it was a little shorter, he still looked too much like Boromir, and we couldn't have that. So I'd gone with a different plan in mind.

There were already a few victims of mine that were taking turns cringing at themselves in the hallway mirror. "I still don't see why this is absolutely necessary," Aragorn called back to me as he fingered his much shorter wavy locks.

"Trust me, it is," I replied.

"None of ya should be complainin'!" Gimli snapped. "Ya barely got anything done to ya!" He'd been the worst so far, as he'd almost punched me in the face when I'd told him he couldn't have the braids in his beard anymore and that I'd have to trim it. Even that hadn't been enough, though. He now had almost a buzz cut, with piles and piles of his thick, tangled dwarf hair all over our floor. Oddly enough, though, it worked well on him.

"I actually kind of like mine," I heard Merry mutter from outside. He and Pippin had both already been done, and they both had the same style: just a shorter, cleaner version of the messy curls they'd had before.

I could see Sam still eying Merry's blonde head apprehensively out of the corner of my eye. He didn't trust a single thing I did yet. "And we all have to do this?"

"Yeah," Erin said. "Everyone."

"Seriously guys, calm down!" Kathryn said as she watched me work. "It's really not that bad. You all look great!"

"I'm sure," Boromir scoffed.

"Oh, shut up," I said. "I'm almost done with you."

Legolas and Frodo, who had also been untouched, stood watching in the doorway. "So then what are we to do about our feet?" Frodo asked quietly. "Kathryn mentioned something about them earlier."

"Don't worry about it," the girl in question replied. "We'll take care of that later." She smiled, and the hobbit smiled back (though a bit nervously).

"Mmhmm." I cut off one last chunk of hair from Boromir's head, then stepped back and looked him over, satisfied with my work. "Okay, you're good. You can open your eyes now."

The Gondorian man slowly cracked open his eyelids and stared at his new reflection. I'd given him a slightly shaggier haircut, with a semi-sort of side bang that was there, but not all that huge and noticeable. He didn't say anything for a long time, just stared.

"Well?" I asked.

"It..." For a second, it looked like he actually was going to say something nice about it, but at the last second, he got a scrutinizing look on his face again. "It will do. Thank you." Without another word, he got up from the chair and slipped out, allowing Legolas to step forward and take a seat.

"He secretly loves it," I whispered with a wink at the others that were peering in through the doorway. They laughed a bit, and I turned to the blonde elf sitting in front of me. "Now let's see...what are we going to do with you?" I picked up a handful of his hair and let it fall again, thinking.

"We'll have to do something that'll cover his ears," Erin spoke up. "And the braids will probably have to come out." Legolas frowned at this and looked at one of them.

I nodded, still trying to come up with an idea. "Hmm...Shit. I got nothing." I sighed and shifted my weight a little. "I don't want to cut all of it off...I don't think that would look right."

"Yeah, neither do I," Kathryn said. "Maybe you could just...I don't know."

"Wait, hang on," I said. "What if I just take the braids out, trim a couple inches off of it so that it's at least a reasonable length, and then we just have him pull it back in a ponytail? He can do it so that it covers the tips of his ears, like this." I demonstrated to them what I was talking about, and both the girls instantly smiled.

"That looks good," Kathryn said. "It kinda fits you, Legolas." Erin nodded in agreement.

I smiled and looked at the elf. "What do you think? Should we do it?"

He seemed to think about it for a second before finally nodding. "I suppose so."

"Awesome." I quickly went to work undoing the elvish braids that hung behind his ears, absentmindedly wondering how long he'd worn them like that. "And don't worry, I won't take too much off."

"All right." I liked how chill Legolas was about the whole thing, honestly. He just sat there patiently and watched me through the mirror, waiting for me to get him finished up.

"So what times are you working tomorrow?" I heard Kathryn ask Erin.

"I'm supposed to be in the store from eight thirty to noon, then I have my lunch break, and then I'm back to work until two thirty. So...I'll be home in the afternoon."

"Oh, okay. We should be done shopping by then."

"Don't go like, totally overboard, okay? They'll probably only need about three or four other outfits to start them off," my brunette friend said.

"I know woman, I know," Kathryn said. "I'm not gonna go buy them all five hundred dollar shirts or something."

"Damn right you won't," I said, "or you'd be working your tail off to pay for it all."

"I just hope we can find everything in the clearance racks like I did yesterday," she said. "Kaia, you're coming with me, right?"

"Of course!" I said. "Why wouldn't I?"

"Cause usually you spend your entire Saturday playing video games and eating candy."

"Shut up!" I said, laughing. "But yeah, I'll come with you."

"Mmkay. Should we split into groups, do you think?"

I shrugged. "Probably. It'd be easier."

"I really wish I didn't have to miss this," Erin said.

"I know, man. Same here." I was almost done trimming Legolas' hair at this point. "Hey Kathryn, find me a rubber band or something."

After a moment of brief silence, Erin spoke up again. "So...when were you guys thinking about teaching them how to shower and all that?"

"Dunno..." I said. "What time is it?"

"It's past ten thirty," Kathryn replied instantly.

I glanced at them both. "Then we should probably just get it done and over with tonight. Like, explain how it works, let a couple of them do it tonight, and a couple of them do it in the morning before we leave."

Erin nodded. "Sounds like a plan. Hey, I'll be back in a couple minutes, okay? I'm gonna dig through my room and see if I can find a butt ton of sticky notes."

At that random statement, Kathryn and I both stopped and looked up at her. "The fuck?" I said. "Why the hell do you need sticky notes?"

But she was already on her way out the door and down the hallway. "You'll see!"

oOo

Erin's POV

I went straight down the stairs after leaving the upstairs bathroom and hurried over to my side of the house as fast as I could. What Kaia and Kathryn didn't know was that there was another reason besides sticky notes that I was going to my room. The actual reason was because I'd just remembered that I hadn't actually cleaned up my room for sharing with Legolas earlier...I'd just gotten rid of all my fangirly crap that would freak him out. But I was looking for sticky notes, too.

I sighed mentally when the thought of the elf prince sharing a room with me popped up in my brain again. I was honestly really nervous about how things would play out. Would he be okay with my room, or would he think it was weird for me to have it decorated the way I did? And I'd never really been the most organized person to begin with, so would that bother him, too? And then there was the general idea that I'd be sharing my girl chambers where I kept my girl things with a man. Eugh. That was just weird to think about.

But alas, I was stuck with him. Sigh. Hopefully we'd be able to get along well enough. He seemed pretty cool so far, so that was a good sign. I finally reached my destination and walked through the open door again, immediately scanning the area for anything that looked horribly out of place...which was a lot. I started by going around and making sure there weren't bras or anything just haphazardly thrown on the floor, then went to straighten out my bed a bit, then rearranged a couple small pieces of furniture so that I could kind of create an area for him to sleep. That's when I realized that he'd need blankets and stuff. _...Oh well. I can take care of that later. _(Did I also mention that I'm a procrastinator?)

After another fifteen minutes or so, while I was in the middle of emptying my overflowing trash can, I heard everyone coming through the front door and into the living room downstairs. "Frick." I still wasn't completely satisfied with how things looked, but whatever. It would have to do. I grabbed the plastic Wal-Mart bag I'd dumped my garbage into and headed downstairs again, making sure to close my bedroom door behind me.

When I came into the the living room, I stopped and gave everyone a once-over, smiling and nodding in approval. "Nice! You guys all look good!" Several of them said thank-yous. Frodo's hair was left a little longer than Merry and Pippin's, but Kaia must've brushed it out or something, because it looked slightly less curly now. Sam's was cut a lot shorter than the other hobbits', but he still retained some short, messy bangs like before. Legolas really didn't look that different to me. His hair was a little shorter, as Kaia'd promised, but still a nice length for him, and his hair was pulled hack behind him so that just a little bit of it hid the pointed tips of his ears. He still looked like he was getting used to it, though.

Kaia bowed. "Thank you, thank you." I smiled and clapped for her.

"Now onto the next thing," Kathryn said. "Showering."

_Here we go. _"Uh, do you guys mind getting things started? I just gotta put this in the big trash can real quick."

"No problem, bro," Kaia said. "Come on, you guys. Upstairs." I slipped away as she ushered them all up to the second floor.

It didn't take me more than a minute to get out to our small backyard where we kept a big old trash can that was periodically kept up with and emptied out. I gagged at the smell, but shook it off as I replaced the lid and ran back inside.

Once I got up to my half's master bathroom, I walked in on Kaia explaining how faucets worked. "...so the water just comes up through here-" she ran her finger along where the pipes would be "-and out of here." She pointed to the shower head.

"But there's no water coming out of there right now," Pippin pointed out.

Merry smacked him upside the head. "Because that wasn't already obvious," he hissed.

Kaia smiled. "No, it's okay. Yes, Pippin, you're right. There's not anything coming out now, but watch. When I twist this knob here..." She did so, and a few gasps were heard as fresh, clean water came shooting out from above a second later.

"And it is already clean for use? It does not need to be tested?" Aragorn asked.

"Right. Now, Frodo, come here for a second." When the dark-haired hobbit hesitated, she smiled warmly at him. "Don't worry, I'm not gonna hurt you or anything. I just want you to stick your hand under the water there."

He stepped forward and did so, quickly yanking his hand out and jerking back a second later. "It's ice cold!" he cried.

Kaia nodded. "Uh huh. And you can change that. Now, look closely." She pointed to the two different knobs. "You see how this one has blue on it, and this one has red?" Heads bobbed up and down. "I have just the blue one turned on now. But if I turn on the red one a little bit as well..." She did so, then turned to Frodo again. "Put your hand back in there."

Frodo repeated the action, only to have a look of shock on his face this time as his hand lingered there. "It's warm!" He looked up at Kaia in disbelief. "How did you do that?"

Again, she pointed to the red knob. "I just turned on that one. The red knob gives you hot water, and the blue one gives you cold. So by that logic, if one of you were to step in here and turn on only the blue knob..."

"Then extremely cold water would come out," Legolas said, catching on.  
She nodded. "And if you turned on just the red?"

"You'd get scalded!" Gimli said.

Kathryn laughed a bit. "Yup. That's how it works. When you guys use these to clean yourselves up, you can turn on both of them and adjust it to whatever temperature you want. Just don't stay in there too long, or you'll use up all the hot water and then no one else will have any." Kaia reached over and turned the water completely off.

"And I like my hot showers," I warned, "so be especially careful if you're using this one."

Kaia nodded again. "Now. Onto the process of how one actually showers. I'm gonna make this as simple as possible." She pointed to the guys. "Your clothes come off. All of them. Everything. Throw them on the floor, fold them up and put them on the counter, the toilet, whatever. Once your clothes are off, you make sure you have one of these babies-" she tugged on my towel and washcloth "within reach of the shower. Then you just step inside here..." she stepped into the tub, "...slide this curtain closed...and then, and ONLY then, can you turn the water on." She pushed the curtain aside again and looked at everyone. "Got it?" They nodded.

"What do you use to clean yourself with?" Sam asked. "Just the water?"

"Oh, no no no," I said, jumping in. "We've got special soaps for that. You know, stuff that'll make you all smell _really _good." Several of them shared looks of astonishment and excitement, and it took me a second to remember that soap was something of a luxury for the middle and lower class people of Middle-Earth. Legolas, Boromir, and Aragorn were probably the only ones that were incredibly familiar with them. "Here, I'll show you. I took Kaia's place at the head of the group and stepped up to the shower stall, reaching up to the hanging shower basket on the wall that I used to hold all my stuff. I pulled out my shampoo and showed it to them. "This is shampoo. It's soap that you only use for your hair." I popped open the cap and squirted a tiny bit into my palm, then held it out to show them. "See? It smells like apples."

"And that's for your hair only, you said?" Legolas asked.

I nodded. "Yes. You just make sure your hair's completely wet, squirt some of this into your hand, and then massage it into your hair, just like normal soap."

"What would one use for the rest of their body, then?"

"You use this." I put the shampoo back, quickly rinsed the small drop off of my palm, and grabbed another bottle. "Shower gel. To use it, you just get your washcloth wet, squirt this on there, and rub it all over yourself to clean up. At least, that's what I do. I guess you can just put the gel right on your skin if you want."

"But don't get it in your eyes, of course," Kathryn said. "That'll sting."

"Yeah," I nodded. "Not in your eyes. But you just use it to clean all the dirt and sweat off of yourself, and then when you're done, you rinse the soap out of your washcloth, hair, and off of your skin, and when you're completely soap-free, you turn the water off, reach out to grab your towel, and then dry yourself off. It's not that different from what you guys do back home, really."

"Where do we put our towels and washcloths when we're done?" Frodo asked.

I opened my mouth to automatically answer, but stopped when I realized there might not be enough room for them all to hang. "Hmm...that's a good question. Uh...At least hang your washcloths up on the bars that are on the back of the door," I said, pointing to them. "Towels...Hang them if you can, but if there's no room left there, just throw them over this shower rod." I reached up and touched the metal. "And if anyone comes in here to shower and there's something hanging here, just take it off and put it on the counter until you're done." I paused, trying to think about whether or not I'd missed anything else. "Any questions?"

Frodo raised a hand. "Just one more. Are we to use your soaps, Erin? Or will we have our own?"

I laughed a little at that, and instantly regretted it, because Frodo looked ashamed to have asked the question. "Sorry, I'm not laughing at you," I reassured him quickly. "I just...I just though of you guys waltzing around the house smelling like flowers and fruit and stuff." That got a chuckle out of some of them. "Uhh...we'll buy you some more manly smelling-stuff tomorrow when we go shopping. Or at least, Kaia and Kathryn will."

"You're not coming with us?" Merry asked.

"No," I said sadly. "I've gotta go to work."

"Where do yo work?"

"I...actually, I'll explain that another time," I said. "Tomorrow, maybe. Right now we should start having a couple of you actually use the showers." I looked to Kaia and Kathryn. "You're okay with letting a couple of them use yours, right?"

"Of course," Kathryn said.

"Cool." I turned back to the Fellowship. "Okay then, why don't we do it this way. Frodo and Sam, since you guys will be sleeping on the other side of the house, you can go over and take turns using Kaia and Kathryn's shower. Gimli, Merry, and Pippin, since you're all sleeping downstairs, you can shower in the morning. Boromir, Aragorn, and Legolas...I think there'll be enough time for two of you to shower in here tonight. Normally we wouldn't care how late you guys are up at night, but it's past eleven, and I don't know how early Kaia and Kathryn want you up tomorrow. The three of you can decide who's showering in the morning." As the guys talked amongst themselves, I turned back to Kaia. "I know you've got a lot of big t-shirts and gym shorts and stuff in your room. Do you think you'd have enough to at least give the four people who are showering something clean to sleep in?"

"Yeah," she nodded. "And I think I actually still have a bottle of Jeremy's Axe shampoo from when the bad slept over after a late practice that one time, so if someone wants to use that, they can."

"Sweet," I said. "Go get that stuff, would you?" She nodded and took off, and I turned back to the others. "So...have you three decided?"

Aragorn nodded. "I will shower tomorrow morning. Boromir and Legolas will shower tonight, and Boromir will go first."

"Sounds good! Kathryn, do you wanna get Gimli, Merry, and Pippin settled in downstairs and then take Frodo and Sam over to shower? I'll take care of the other three."

"Okay. C'mon, guys!" She led the little people out of the bathroom and back downstairs.

I exhaled and smiled at the two men and the elf. "And then there were four. Boromir, Aragorn, I can show you your room real quick if you want." They nodded, and all three followed me out and through the upstairs hallway until we reached the guest room. I opened the door and showed them into the white-walled, plain room. "It's not anything fancy," I said, "but hopefully it'll be okay for you two." I pointed to the dresser and closet. "You guys can divide your clothes and all up in there once we get you more stuff...obviously there's only one bed, so one of you will have to kinda make your own mattress on the floor, but I think there's a spare one in that closet there anyway. If you need anything at all, I'm right next door. Oh, and the light switch is here by the door." I flicked it twice to let them know. "So yeah. Just come over and tell me if you need anything. Have fun," I said with a wink as I slipped out.

As soon as I shut the door and turned around, I almost jumped out of my skin to see Legolas standing there. "Oh frick! ...Sorry, I didn't realize you were right there."

He smiled a bit. "It is fine. Your room is this one here, you said?" He nodded to my right.

"Yeah," I said. "...Uh..let's go." I slowly started moving towards the closed door, my heart pounding out of nervousness as the thought about what his reaction would be. _Why the frick am I so embarrassed to show him my room? _I thought as I grabbed the doorknob. _Oh, yeah. Because it's Legolas._

**A/N: Again, I apologize for how late this is. ;A; I don't know what's wrong with me. Feel free to throw rotten tomatoes/dead cats/concrete bricks if you wish. *cries forever***


	5. Welcome to Our World

**A/N: OHHHHHH MYYYYY GOOOOOOSH**

**I love you. I love each and every single one of you who faved, who reviewed, who followed...anything. I love you all so much. ;w;**

**When I uploaded that last chapter, I honestly expected to get no feedback other than Kathryn. I mean...I just felt so awful for not uploading in so long, and in my head, I was thinking "Look, Erin, now you've gone a blown it. Everyone's probably forgotten about this fic by now cause you're stupid and had to procrastinate for so many days. Way to go. You screwed it up."**

**And then I checked my email.**

**And my inbox exploded.**

**And I almost cried. **

**Thank you so so so so so so so sooooooooooooooo so so so much for still sticking with this, you guys. Seriously, I was so scared that everyone would be like "E4me100? Who's that?" So it's seriously really relieving to know that people out there still remember me. :3 Even though I don't deserve it one bit. **

**Thank you. Thank you thank you thank you. I love you all~**

**And now to respond to a couple of reviews I got:**

**Kathinamori: KATHRYN BBZ I LOVE YOU SO MUCH GUUUURL~ I love you 5ever for getting me to update again. ;w; And YES SKINNY JEANS OMW XD I knew I had to do it to someone, and at first I was like "...Should I do it to Legolas? That's like...really predictable...LOL NVM LEGGLES WILL FOREVER BE TORMENTED BY ME MWAHAHAHA"**

**Link's Rose: Ahhh, I hate when that happens. D: And thank you so much for thinking we're awesome! C: I'll be sure to tell the girls that you said that! That'll make their day. XD It's funny, because I was actually asked a couple times while writing the other series if I was gonna do a sequel...and while this isn't really a sequel, it's kind of a weird reverse-scenario kind of thing. You know what I mean? (probably not lol) I'll probably have already messaged you about the Mary-Sue thing before I get this uploaded, so...C:**

**On with the fic! (Did I seriously just waste a whole page in OpenOffice with the A/N? Never again. -_-)**

Chaos Unleashed: Chapter Five

Erin's POV

I didn't immediately turn around and look at him once we stepped inside. I just walked forward to the middle of the room and let out a breath. "So...this is my room. Uh...sorry, it's kinda small, but hopefully you can make yourself at home well enough." I paused, not sure what else to say. "Since we're gonna be sharing this room now, I guess it's not a big deal if you want to borrow any of my stuff for some reason. The only thing I ask that you absolutely don't mess with is my laptop-" I pointed in its general direction "-and my clothes." I took a few more steps forward and subconsciously ran my fingers over my blankets from where I stood at the foot of the bed. "But, I mean... I'd prefer it if you asked me first before you use something anyway." He didn't say anything in response, and I turned around after a minute, confused. "Legolas?"

To my surprise, he wasn't even looking at me. A painting of the tree-covered hill that was Caras Galadhon against a sunset sky had caught his eye from where it hung on my wall, and he was staring at it with his lips parted slightly in what I assumed was shock. "This is the great elven city of Lothlórien," he said. His piercing blue gaze suddenly flicked to me. "You did this?"

My face burned with embarrassment. "...Uh, y-yeah," I stuttered, "but it was a long time ago."

What he said next caught me off guard. "It is beautiful."

I blinked. "Oh! Thanks."

He nodded, eyes continuing to search my walls and look at the other things that decorated them. I was suddenly very aware of the large gaps where my Legolas posters had been, but thankfully he didn't seem to notice it. "And you made all of these?" he asked.

"Not all," I corrected him. "Some of them are just really big posters; images that other people made, that you can buy in stores. Like this one." I reached out to the nearby wall and tapped a Mario Party 9 poster. "I got it as a gift one year from a friend."

He smiled a bit, then raised an eyebrow at me when he noticed how there were more _Lord of the Rings_ posters than any others. "You take great interest in these movies about our quest, I see."

I laughed a bit uncomfortably and looked away. "Yeah...I guess it...it just became a passion of mine, you know? I mean, I've been a fan of them since I was eight. And it's just so...enchanting to me." I smiled a bit as I sat down on my bed. "To think that one man devoted nearly all his life to create such a fantastic tale, and then go on to develop an insanely detailed history about it...I mean, he invented so many different races, and for each race, he developed different languages, in-depth cultures and customs, different ideas for how they looked, acted, talked. And then another ingenious man decided to take the challenge of capturing it on film for the world to see...and he did it perfectly." I fell silent at first, then quietly added "...It's the kind of world I always wished I could escape to."

I lifted my head to look at Legolas, hoping that the last comment didn't sound too weird. He just looked back at me for a moment, head tilted just a hair to the side, thinking about what I'd just said. "You wish to come to Middle-Earth?"

"More than anything," I said honestly. "There have been so many times when my life has just been so messed up, and the one thing that can always get my back in a good mood is to go watch the movies or reread the books...and just take the time to immerse myself in it." I chuckled as I recalled another memory. "In fact, when I was much younger, only a little kid, I remember after the first time I watched the movies, I ran outside and spent the rest of the day pretending I was an elf princess who was going on an adventure to find her missing prince."

That got a small laugh out of Legolas, too. "You wanted to be an elf?"

"I did." I didn't know why I was already being so open with him and talking about this kind of thing already. Maybe it was because I knew I could trust him. Maybe it was because I wanted to be open and get him to trust me. I laughed a little more as I went on. "And I would always get upset when I woke up, looked in the mirror, and saw that I still didn't have pointy ears."

He laughed again, then asked another question. "You said that Middle-Earth is an escape for you. But what are you escaping from?"

At that, I sighed. _Oh, if only I had time to list them all. _"From this world. Don't get me wrong, I mean, I love the life that I have now, but...there's just so many things about our world that aren't right. Wars, violence, betrayal, and...and no value for some of the important things in life. To me, Middle-Earth is just so much purer and full of more good than here."

"But we still have wars," he said. "We always have, and always will."

"I know," I said. "Sadly, war is something that no one can get away from. But in Middle-Earth, it just...it just seems like it'd be much more enjoyable for me than living through all the crap that happens here." I finally fell silent again, not feeling the need to say any more. The two of us just stayed where we were, staring at the ground and letting the conversation hang in the air.

Suddenly, a sharp knock came on the door, causing me to nearly jump out of my skin. "Legolas!" I heard Boromir's muffled voice say. "I've finished. You may use the shower now."

"Thank you," the elf replied.

I looked back at him. "You remember how to use it, right?"

"Yes, I believe so."

"Cool. I have to get up early tomorrow, so I think I'm just gonna go to bed now, okay? I'll get some blankets and pillows and stuff piled up on the floor for you, and you can adjust them however you want to sleep in."

He nodded. "All right. Thank you, Erin."

I offered up a friendly smile. "No problem."

oOo

Kathryn's POV

"...and I think that's pretty much all you'll need to know about my room." I finished my short speech and smiled at the two hobbits standing in front of me. "I'll set up a little area where you can sleep...and you two were gonna shower, right?" They both nodded.

"You can go first, Mr. Frodo," Sam said.

The blue-eyed hobbit nodded. "Thank you, Sam. Kathryn, where can I find soaps and other things to use again?"

"Kaia should've set everything up for you already," I answered, "so you shouldn't need to really look for anything."

"All right. I'm off, then." With a short nod to the two of us, Frodo turned and headed over to the bathroom.

Once he was gone, I turned to Sam. "Do you mind helping me move my dresser over a little? I was thinking of having you two sleep in the corner there." I pointed to show him what I meant.

Sam followed my finger, then nodded. "Of course, Miss Kathryn."

I rolled my eyes as we walked over to the dresser. "How many times do I have to tell you not to call me 'Miss?'"

"Sorry," he said quickly. "Kathryn. Just Kathryn."  
I laughed a bit. "There you go. Now, why don't we just try and push this thing over..." The two of us successfully managed to slide the semi-heavy dresser a few feet to the right, leaving a bigger area in the corner for Frodo and Sam. Unfortunately, some of the junk I kept on top of the piece of furniture got knocked off in the process, so we then had to pick that up.

I'd just grabbed two chapsticks before they'd rolled underneath my bed when I heard Sam speak up. "Kathryn? What's this?"

Looking up, I saw he held the speaker for my iPod in his hand and smiled. "That's called a speaker. It's this cool little thing that plays music when you stick something into it."

"What goes into it?"

"I'll show you!" I reached into my pocket and pulled my iPod out so he could see. "This is called an iPod. With it, you can listen to music, look at pictures, watch movies, play games...honestly, these guys do just about anything." I quickly untangled my headphones and held out one. "Here. Put this in your left ear." I made sure the volume was at a reasonable level once Sam stuck it in, then pressed play. Instantly, a song by my favorite band called Broken Iris started to play.

Sam's eyes got huge, and his jaw dropped. "...That's amazing!" He peered down curiously at my iPod. "How does it do that?"

I shrugged. "Even I don't know the answer to that. But yeah, they're pretty cool." I paused the song and removed the ear buds. "Now watch. If I take these out...and set the iPod down in here..." I hit play again, and the song went on, but now it came out of the speaker that Sam still held in his hand.

I must've startled him, because he almost dropped it. "How's that possible?" he asked in wonder.

"Oh, just you wait," I said excitedly. "You haven't seen anything yet. Heck, that's just the beginning of what iPods can do." That statement led to more questions from him, and I was more than willing to answer them. For the next twenty minutes or so, we sat together on the floor, messing around with the little piece of technology as I explained to him what certain things were and how they worked.

Right after I'd finished showing Sam how my favorite photo editing app worked (and taking several selfies of us both in the process), Frodo came back. I smiled at seeing him in the doorway with a wet head and wearing a t-shirt and gym shorts that were obviously too big for him. "Hey!"

"Hello," he said. "Sam, you can go get washed up now. I'm done." Sam nodded and quietly slipped out as I exited out of the photo of him that I'd just been messing around with.

"So how was your _shower_? Did you get _wet_?" As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I froze and slowly raised my head to look at Frodo, who was staring back at me, wide-eyed. "Oh my God...I swear I didn't mean to say that!" I burst out laughing at my own mistake, and to my surprise, Frodo did too.

"Why on Earth did you ask me that?" he said, still chuckling.

"I'm so sorry," I replied. "It's this thing that Kaia, Erin and I do. After one of us showers, we'll just look at them and go..." Here I lowered my voice and changed my tone to make it sound slightly sexual. "...Did you get..._wet_?"

Frodo laughed even more. "Really?"

"Yeah," I nodded. "You should do it to them sometime, just to freak them out." The hobbit smiled at that idea and nodded his agreement, and I laughed again. "You're alright, kid. You're alright." I held out my fist expectantly, then realized what I was doing when he just stared at it blankly. "Bump your fist against mine," I explained. "It's called a brofist. Friends do it to each other."

"Ah." He copied my fist and touched it to mine, looking to me for approval. "That is a...a brofist?"

"Yep." I grinned. "You're one of us now."

He smiled again. "Wonderful." I went back to hopping on the internet via my iPod and checked my Tumblr for updates, as I did often. As I scrolled through my dashboard, laughing quietly to myself as I came across funny posts, I saw Frodo walking around my room and exploring it a bit through my peripheral vision. After a few minutes, I heard him speak. "What are these?"

I paused and looked up. "Oh! You found my manga collection!"

His brow furrowed in confusion. "Your what?"

I got up from where I was seated and walked over to him, taking the Japanese comic book out of his hand. "It's called manga. They come from a country far away from here called Japan, and it's a little book that tells a story with pictures drawn in a certain style." I flipped through the book quickly to show him. "See?"

Frodo's frown deepened. "But...you're reading it backwards."

I laughed. "Oh, no. In Japan, they read their books from right to left, not left to right like we do. So technically, _this_ is the way you're supposed to read them."

"I see. May I?" I handed him the book, and he started slowly flipping through it, bright blue eyes moving across the page as he looked it over.

I turned to the low shelf on my wall that held all the other books in the series and ran a hand over them. "It's part of a big series. I've got all the books right here." Frodo stopped skimming and looked back at me. "And the other really cool thing is that people will take the pictures and storylines of those manga books and turn them into a moving image, like the movies we explained to you earlier."

"But they still look like this?" Frodo pointed to a picture in the book.

"Yeah," I said, "but they're in color. The animated version's called...well, anime."

Frodo nodded and went back to skimming through the book again. After awhile, he asked another question. "What's the name of this..."

"Manga." I filled in for him.

"Yes. Manga. What is this one called?"

A small grin appeared on my face. "Shugo Chara. It's my favorite series ever."

"Really?" I nodded. Frodo flipped through three more pages of the book, then turned back to me and said the most beautiful thing I'd heard all day long. "It seems interesting. Would you mind if I read all of them?"

It took all I had not to squeal and suffocate him with a hug, and I nodded furiously. "Frodo Baggins...you and I are gonna be great friends."

oOo

Kaia's POV

"Trent, I know!" I said as I paced back and forth in the music room. "I'm sorry!"

"No, Kaia," my bassist's voice came crackling through the speaker of my phone. "You can't keep pulling this shit on me. You just told me a couple hours ago that we could meet tomorrow!"

"And we still can!" I replied, exasperated. "Just not at my house! We have...guests over."

"Then tell them to get out and go somewhere else!"

"Trent!" I shouted. "Stop being an asshole!" I groaned in frustration and stopped pacing. "I'm sorry, but this was something unexpected! Can't we just meet at Jen's house?" Our drummer was a pretty cool girl, so I didn't see the problem with asking her to host the meeting.

"That's not the point!" Trent cried. "The point is that you keep acting like a little bitch and changing our plans at the last minute! Just because you're the lead singer doesn't mean you get whatever you want! I'm the one who formed this band anyway!"

I frowned. "Uh, excuse me? We formed it together. _I'm _the one who came to you first."

"Does that really fucking matter? All I'm concerned about is getting everyone to meet up somewhere tomorrow. But since you're being an ass and changing shit again..."

"Oh my God, would you stop?" I hissed. "Just tell Jen that we gotta do it at her house!"

After a minute, Trent sighed. "Fine. I'll call Jeremy and tell him things have changed. But you'd better hope that Jen can still do it in the afternoon, or I'm gonna fucking murder you."

I rolled my eyes. "Bye, Trent."

"Fuck off."

I pulled the phone away from my ear and hung up, then growled in frustration and punched the wall (though not hard enough to leave a dent or anything). _What the shit is his problem lately? He's yelling at me for not getting my act together, and he's the one that's bossing everyone around like he's in charge all the time! God damn, I want to punch him!_ Trent had seemed like an awesome guy when we first met, and I couldn't deny that he had sick guitar skills, too. He was just really hotheaded...and so was I. When the two of us butted heads, the feud usually lasted for awhile before either of us would cool off. And even then, neither of us would ever admit to being wrong. We'd just move on and act like it never happened. But lately we'd been at each other's throats pretty often...for several weeks, in fact.

It had crossed my mind a couple times that evening that he was gonna try and pull something to get me kicked out of the band, which I desperately hoped wouldn't happen. _God, if he did that...holy shit, I'd be screwed. _And he knew it, too. Trent was very much aware that this band was my main source of income, and without it, I probably wouldn't be able to keep up with paying my share of the rent and bills for the house. _What am I gonna do if that happens? Will that even happen? No...it shouldn't. Jen and Jeremy are cool, they wouldn't do anything like that. If anything, I could probably get Trent kicked out instead. _But that wasn't an option. If he left, we'd be minus one bassist, and since we weren't professionals yet, it wasn't like we could just pluck a random bassist off the street to fill in for him. We'd basically be on hold until we could get another band member.

And to make matters worse, the same didn't necessarily go for me. I was the lead singer, yes, and that's an important position, but Jen had a good voice. She could easily take my place if she needed to. And Jeremy was the one who did backup vocals as it was. Even he could replace me if I was forced out of the band.

"Oh my God..." I groaned, lying down on the floor and dragged my hands down my face. "What the hell is going on with my band?" I laid there for a few minutes, trying to just relax and not think about it. However, that was pretty difficult to do when the room was absolutely plastered with posters of various bands that I loved, along with a handful of equipment I'd bought out of my own pocket through lots and lots of saving. I stared up at a poster of Paramore, my favorite band, and looked at Hayley Williams. "Give me advice, O Great and Powerful One."

Silence.

"...You suck." I slowly peeled myself off the floor and sighed again, finally deciding to head downstairs and get some ice cream. That would make everything better.

**A/N: Hey guys! :D Quick little note here at the bottom, too. First off: Sorry that this chapter's shorter, but I promised Kathryn I would upload tonight, and I gotta go to bed soon. D:**

**Second: Kathryn and I are actually going on an all-weekend youth retreat tomorrow morning with the church youth group, so I won't be updating over the weekend. :I I'm bringing my fanfiction notebook with me though, so maybe I'll be able to write the next chapter out while I have free time there. :3 I hope so.**

**Third: Happy Valentine's Day/Single's Awareness Day! :D And don't forget to review! (Can't believe we're about to break 30 already! You're all awesome!)**

**~Erin**


	6. Let the Fun Begin

**A/N: I suck at this "updating regularly" thing, don't I? :I Sorry about that, bros.**

**Replying to Weasly-Valdez's review: Haha, yup. Frodo's reading Shugo Chara now. XD Trust me, things will get weirder.**

Chaos Unleashed: Chapter Six

Erin's POV

I woke up bright and early to the harsh beeping of my alarm clock the next morning at exactly 6:30 AM. Groaning, I rolled over from where I laid in my bed and smashed my hand down on the aggravating piece of black plastic. "Shut UP!"

"Erin?" I heard Legolas' slightly muffled voice through the pillow that was covering my head. "What is that? Is something wrong?"

"Yeah," I mumbled, "my life."

"What?"

"Nothing!" I said louder. I finally got my alarm to shut off and then rolled out of bed. "You can go back to sleep." I ran a hand through my hair and rubbed my eyes.

"What about you?" Legolas was stretched out on the big pile of soft blankets and fluffy pillows that I'd gotten for him. He still wore a couple elements of his original Fellowship ensemble, like the pants and silver-blue undershirt, but his tunic, boots, vambrances, and cloak had all been removed and neatly set on the floor by my closet.

"I have to go to work today," I said.

"So early? It is hardly even light out!"

"I know. It sucks." I sighed. "But I still have to go, so..."

Legolas nodded. "Very well, then. When will you return?"

"In the afternoon," I replied. "I'll be in and out of here while I'm getting ready, though." He nodded again, and I slipped out of my bedroom after grabbing the black GameStop polo, jeans, and other things I'd be wearing today.

Once I reached my destination, I locked the bathroom door behind me and flicked the lights on before glancing in the mirror and cringing. "That's got to be the _sexiest_ bedhead I've ever seen," I muttered as I pushed my messy brown side bangs out of my eyes. "I'm surprised Leggles didn't scream." I snickered as I remembered the origin of the ridiculous nickname for him. _Oh, Tumblr. _I checked to make sure all my stuff was where it should've been inside the shower, then began the process of peeling my tank top and green shorts off of my small body. As I tossed my pajamas onto the tile floor, my mind started to wander. The first thing I thought about was Jared.

_No. We're not gonna start thinking about Jared. Nooooope. Nope nope nope. _I hopped into the shower stall and closed the curtain around me, then jumped when I twisted the knobs and got sprayed with icy cold water a second later.

I waited a few moments for it to warm up, letting it wash over me and wake me up a bit while I thought about what my schedule for the day would be. _Let's see...work until 12, lunch break, then back to work again until 3...I should really finish up those last three commissions when I get home, too. Although I don't know if Kaia and Kathryn will have anything else planned for us to do with the Fellowship today besides the shopping thing. Kathryn will have to go to work for a couple hours once I get home...but at least Kaia has the day off. Oh wait, didn't she say she had some kind of band meeting this afternoon? Crap. Guess I'll be home alone with them for part of the afternoon. _As I continued my little mind ramblings, I reached for my shampoo and started quickly working the suds through my hair. It didn't take me much longer after that to grab a washcloth and clean the rest of myself off, quietly humming little snippets of random songs as I went.

When I finally decided I was done showering about twenty minutes later, I quickly turned off the hissing hot water and shivered from the sudden change in temperature as I stepped out. My soft white towel was wrapped around me a moment later, and I wiped the steam off of the bathroom sink's mirror before grabbing my brush and going to work on my hair. _I wish I had off work more...but then again, we're tight enough on money as it is. _I plugged in my hairdryer and flicked it on, feeling a blast of hot air in my face a split second later.

A slight frown appeared on my face as I stared at my reflection in the mirror, hair flying everywhere. _How in the world are we gonna be able to pay for enough food to feed eight more mouths, though?_ I sighed before switching the dryer to my other hand to finish the job of drying my hair. _Guess I'll have to try and get more people to buy art to make some extra cash...again. _Don't get me wrong, I loved being an artist, but...more and more often these days I found myself being bogged down with a bunch of unfinished commissions that desperately needed finished and no time to finish them.

Once my hair was back to its normal fluffy state, I plugged in my black flat iron and started getting dressed for the day while it heated up. The all-too-familiar black shirt slipped over my head easily, and I patted the GameStop logo where it rested in the upper left corner of my chest. _How long have I been working there now? Almost a year, I think. _I smirked a bit. _Here I am, a high school graduate, and all I do for a living is paint, draw, and sell video games. Go figure. _After I finished getting dressed, it was a quick run through my thick, multi-layered, shoulder-length chestnut hair with a brush and the straightener, deep espresso brown eyeliner and mascara applied around my light hazel eyes, and then gathering up all my stuff to haul it back to my bedroom.

I nudged open the slightly ajar door with my foot and slipped in, trying not to disturb Legolas. The elf was still lying peacefully on his back, eyes closed. A glance at my clock told me it was about 7:20. _Jared will be here in twenty minutes, then. I got time. _I tossed my dirty pajamas into my hamper, making a mental note to do my laundry sometime soon. I walked over to my dresser and started rummaging through my jewelry, trying to pick out the right accessories for the day.

Just as I settled on a small silver cross necklace and a couple thin silver bangles, a voice from behind startled me. "Do women not wear gowns here?"

I jumped a bit and turned around to see Legolas leaning back on his elbows, looking at me curiously. Or rather, my outfit. "Oh! I thought you were sleeping. I'm sorry, did I wake you up?"

He nodded, but smiled anyway. "It is not a problem. Elves are light sleepers. But you did not answer my question. Do most women wear pants in this world?"

Now it was my turn to nod. "Yeah. Actually, women tend to wear pants more than skirts. We have these things called jeans that just about everyone wears, like these." I patted my denim-covered leg. "They're all made of the same material, but you can get them in just about any size, color, and style."

"Interesting," he mused as I clipped my necklace around my neck. "What else do women typically wear?"

I suppressed a laugh at that. "Oh, you'd be surprised." When he frowned at my statement, I exhaled. "Let's just say...women today aren't afraid to show their bodies off."

His eyebrows shot up at that. "Really?"

I nodded. "Yeah. It's kind of annoying, really. You'll see girls walking around in the middle of winter with shorts that stop here." I pointed to my upper thighs.

The look on Legolas' face was actually pretty funny. He looked totally disgusted. "You are serious?"

"Sadly, yes." I slipped my bracelets on and turned around to pick out a perfume. "You'll see what I mean when you go to the mall today, I'm sure. Especially since the weather's getting warmer now." I turned back around, and he still looked disapproving. "But none of us girls living here are like that, I promise," I said. "We at least have _some_ decency."

"Thank the Valar for that."

"Yep." I nodded in agreement, then clapped my hands together. "Well! I'm off to go eat some breakfast before my friend comes to pick me up so we can go to work." I spritzed myself with a tropical, fruity scent before heading towards the door.

"You work with a friend?" I heard him ask.

"Yeah," I called back to him. "His name's Jared. You should meet him sometime!" I paused. "Actually, if you guys come shopping at the mall today, you might be able to stop in and say hi to us." I smiled. "If you get the chance, ask Kaia and Kathryn to take you to GameStop. That's where we work."

Legolas smiled back. "I will try and remember."

"Awesome. See ya!" I gave him a little wave before leaving my room and closing the door behind me. It still felt a bit weird to say that Legolas was in my room...but then again, _Legolas was in my room._ That was insanely cool all at the same time.

I snuck downstairs and grabbed my house keys from where they sat on a small table in the foyer, along with my phone that I'd left there last night. As I stepped outside to get to the other side of the house, I turned it on to find a few random texts from various people I knew, most of them being friends of mine saying good night.

My bare feet found their way across the front porch and over to the second front door, and from there it didn't take me long at all to reach our kitchen. I grabbed an unfrosted strawberry Pop-Tart and threw it in the toaster, then poured a fresh glass of orange juice to go with it from the fridge, and topped things off by snatching a banana from the fruit basket on the counter top. Once my Pop-Tart was done, I wrapped it up in a napkin and took my breakfast with me as I went back out on the front porch to sit and wait for my ride.

I plopped down on the front step, making sure that both doors were locked behind me first and tucking my keys in one pocket. I pulled my iPod nano out of the other, sticking an earbud in and bobbing my head along to the music as I nibbled on my breakfast. I'd never really been that much of a morning person, but I'll admit that it was nice to be able to sit outside at first light and kind of listen to the world wake up on days like today. Sometimes, if I was feeling really adventurous, I'd wake up extra early just to catch the sunrise before going back to sleep for another half hour.

At 7:38, the sound effect of Mario getting a one-up mushroom rang out from my pocket, and I pulled out my phone to see a new text from Jared. _Coming down the street now. C u in ten seconds. _I snapped my phone closed and ran back to the kitchen to set my empty glass in the sink and grabbed my large black tote bag I carried practically everything in on the way back out. I stepped outside just in time to see Jared's dark green car pull up out front and smiled as I headed off to start my day.

oOo

Kathryn's POV

"Kathryn, get up."

"Murrrrrr." I reached up to swat away the hand on my shoulder.

"Get up! It's 8:30, and we have to take everyone out shopping and be back in time for you to go to work."

I groaned again before unwillingly rolling over and opening my eyes. Kaia stood beside my bed, still in her pajamas, and I could see Sam and Frodo were also just waking up as well. "Do we have to?"

"Yes, Kathryn, we do," she said. When I didn't respond immediately, she rolled her eyes, reached under my covers, and grabbed my ankles. "Do I have to pull you?"

I saw Frodo and Sam's confused looks from behind her and quickly shook my head. "No," I said, finally kicking my laziness aside and pulling myself upright. "I'm up!"

"Good," she replied, "because I still have to shower, along with Gimli, Merry, Pippin, and Aragorn. And we've gotta make breakfast, too."

I blinked. "Shit. We probably should've woken up earlier."

"Probably," she said with a sigh. "Oh well. I'll run over and get everyone else up while you get dressed and all. Be quick, okay?"

"Got it," I said as I fully got out of bed. "You gonna want breakfast?"

Kaia shook her head. "Nah. I'll shower while everyone else is eating." With that, she walked out of my room, leaving the hobbits and I to ourselves.

I smiled at them. "Morning, guys."

"Good morning, Kathryn," Frodo echoed. Sam smiled back and nodded. "What are we to do again?"

"Kaia and I are going to take all of you guys to this thing called a mall today. It's a really big building with lots and lots of different shops where you can buy clothes, food, books, other stuff for entertainment...everything. So you guys will have to get dressed in your Earth clothes for today, because if you go walking around the mall in your other outfits, people are gonna think you're crazy." I took a breath after my mini-speech. "You guys brought your clothes that I gave you up here, right?"

Sam nodded and pointed to my dresser. "They're sittin' right up there."

"Yay," I said, grinning. "Go ahead and get dressed. If you need help with something, just let me know."

No one moved a muscle.

I stared blankly at the two, wondering why they were looking at my funny. It wasn't until Frodo spoke up again that I figured it out. "...Kathryn? I'm sorry, but weren't you planning on stepping out?"

"OH!" I smacked myself in the head. "Yeah, yeah, I'll leave. Sorry, you guys. Just let me grab my own stuff." I went to my dresser and started digging through the drawers to pull something together. "I didn't even think about that."

"It's all right," Frodo reassured me.

I finally settled on an outfit and slid the drawers shut. "Well bye!" I waved a little before leaving them alone to do their thing. Once I closed the door behind me, I aimed straight for the bathroom, only to hear running water coming from inside. _Someone must already be in there. Weird. I didn't even hear them come in. _I shrugged and changed my destination to Kaia's room, since I figured she wouldn't be in there.

Once I was alone, I stripped down and tossed my oversized t-shirt and baggy pants onto her bed, then wasted no time in putting on the clothes I'd selected. My outfit today consisted of a grey t-shirt with a slice of watermelon on the front (don't ask), jean shorts, my black Toms, my Shugo Chara lock and key necklace, my dragon necklace, my pocket watch necklace, and a chain link bracelet. While I was in the middle of putting my shirt on, however, I heard the door open behind me. Fearing the worst, I tensed and turned around.

Kaia stood in the doorway, looking at me oddly. "...Care to explain why you're half-naked in my bedroom, Kathryn?"

We both started laughing as she stepped in and closed the door behind her. "Oh...I think you know why," I said, making a suggestive face. That only made us laugh harder. "Frodo and Sam are changing in my room, and someone else was already using the bathroom, so I came here."

She let out an over dramatic sigh. "Kathryn, how many times have I told you? You can't get naked in here! I don't let strippers into my room!"

I beamed. "You can't control me, Kaia! It's a part of who I am on the inside!" I put my hand on my heart. "I can't even control myself!"  
"Well, you need to!"

I flailed around a bit. "Well, I can't!"

"JESUS, WOMAN! CALM YOUR TITS!" she yelled. We both burst out laughing again, to the point where I doubled over and was gasping for air.

"I'm dying!" I said, still laughing a bit as I stood back up.

Kaia's laughter finally died down, too. "That was perfect."

I wiggled my eyebrows at her again. "Well, I guess if you don't mind me being here..."

"Put your shirt on and get out," she said, still smiling.

"Fine." I did as told, but shot one last wink over my shoulder as I left her room and headed back over to my own.

By the time I got over there and knocked to enter, the hobbits were already done. I walked in and looked them both over, nodding in approval. "You look nice," I complimented. Frodo's striped shirt looked good on him, the black and purple making his eyes stand out nicely. Sam's light blue shirt was a nice color for him, too. The jeans were a bit long, which I kind of expected, but they at least put them on correctly. The only thing they hadn't put on were the flip-flops. "But you guys remember what I said, right? You'll have to put your shoes on when we leave."

They nodded. "How do you wear them?" Sam asked.

"Oh, it's easy," I said. I ran over and grabbed a pair of my own from my closet, pulling my Toms off for a second. "Look, you just slide them on so the straps go in between these two toes."

"Ahh," Sam replied. "I see."

I kicked the simple shoes off and slipped on my original ones. "Well since you guys are dressed, we should probably head downstairs for breakfast now. Come on." I noticed how their eyes widened at the mention of food, and they eagerly followed me as I led them to the kitchen.

When we got down there, I was already surprised to see the majority of the Fellowship gathered at the table. Legolas, Boromir, Gimli, and Pippin were all present and fully dressed, and Pippin's eyes brightened when his hobbit friends appeared behind me. I mentally patted myself on the back for the good job I'd done in picking out clothes for them all. The only things I didn't really like were the grey-blue color of Boromir's shirt, Gimli's cargo pants, and the way Pippin's jeans fit him. It also didn't occur to me until then that I hadn't bought any of them socks, so I took the back-pat back a moment later.

"Hey guys," I said with a wave as I went to the kitchen area. "Hope you're hungry!"

"I'm starving!" Pippin cried. Sam smacked him on the arm.

I just laughed. "Good. Is there anything in particular you guys want?"

Legolas caught my attention. "Any fruit would suffice for me."

"Do you have sausage?" Pippin spoke up. "And biscuits?"

"We don't have biscuits," I said, "but I can cook up some sausage patties for you." The ginger nodded eagerly, and I looked to the rest of the men. "Do you all want some?" They nodded, too.

As I walked over to the fridge, I heard Gimli speak. "What kinds of food do you have here that are special to your world, missy?"

I pulled the box of sausages out of the freezer and glanced over my shoulder at the dwarf. "Oh, tons of stuff. We have this thing called cereal, which is like...well, it depends what kind of cereal you ask for. Some kinds of cereal are flaky, some are round and taste like chocolate, some are shaped like different things and taste fruity...but whatever kind of cereal you get, you pour it in a bowl, and then you pour milk over it, and you eat it like you'd eat a bowl of soup."

"Sounds interesting," said a new voice. I looked up to see Merry walk into the room, his hair still damp. "I'll have some of that, if you please."

I waved him over. "We've got a couple different kinds. Come pick one out." I pulled out all the different boxes and set them on the counter, then opened them for him. "You can just reach in there and pull a little bit out to taste it and see if you like it."

"Can I try that, too?" Pippin asked.

"Sure!" I replied. "Oh, and we've also got these things called Pop-Tarts. Erin likes those."

"What is a Popped Tart?" Gimli asked.

I reached into the cupboard and pulled out a the box of plain strawberry Pop-Tarts and showed him the box. "It's like a thin sheet of bread with a sweet filling in the middle. Sometimes they have frosting on them, too, but these don't."

He eyed it for a second. "I'll take one of those."

"Okay. So that's fruit for Legolas, a Pop-Tart for Gimli, cereal for Merry and Pippin...and sausages for everybody." I pulled out a skillet and turned the burner on to start cooking. "What do the rest of you want? We've got other Earth food if you want to try something new."

Boromir raised a hand. "Do you have eggs here?"

"Yup. Want some?"

"That would be nice, thank you."

I went back to the fridge and pulled a couple out. "Anyone else want some?"

"I'll take some too, Kathryn," Sam said. "Scrambled, please."

"Got it. How do you want yours done, Boromir?"

"Anything is fine with me."

I pulled out another skillet for the eggs. "Oh! Does anyone want some toast or yogurt?"

"Toast sounds good," Frodo said. "With butter, please."

"Mmhmm." I stuck a Pop-Tart in the toaster for Gimli as I felt a tap on the back. I turned to see Merry and Pippin each holding up different boxes.

"I'd like this one," Pippin said, holding up some Lucky Charms.

"And I'll take this one," Merry said next, shaking the box of Cocoa Puffs.

_Ohhh, they picked sugary ones. This can't end well. _I smiled anyway. "Excellent choices." Just set them on this counter and I'll get the cereal ready in a minute. I put the other two boxes of Special K and Rice Krispies back where they belonged, then dumped a bunch of small sausage patties into one skillet. I pulled an apple from the fruit basket and a bunch of grapes for Legolas, plopped them on a plate, and took them over to the elf, who nodded his thanks. After that, Gimli's Pop-Tart finished toasting, and I took that over to the dwarf before sticking in some toast for Frodo. After pouring Merry and Pippin some cereal and setting it on the table, I flipped the sausages and cracked Sam and Boromir's eggs, scrambling one of them. "Anyone want something to drink? We have orange juice, apple juice, and milk."

"Is there water?" Legolas asked.

I nodded. "I'll get you some. Anyone else?"

"We'd all like to try the apple juice," Frodo said.

Then Gimli spoke up. "I'd like some milk, Kathryn, to go with this excellent..." He trailed off, forgetting the word.

"Pop-Tart," I finished.

"Pop-Tart! Yes, that's it!" he laughed.

After finishing up the eggs and sausage, I handed the eggs out individually and then just dumped all the sausage onto one big plate for them to split. At that moment, Aragorn walked down. "What is all this?" he asked.

"Breakfast," I said with a smile. "You want something?"

"Yes, please," he said as he took a seat. "Anything will do."

I nodded and produced another egg from the fridge for him, as well as all the drinks. When everything had finally been served, I started brewing some coffee for myself, as well as pouring a bowl of Cocoa Puffs.

It was quiet for awhile as everyone ate until Sam spoke up. "You made all that food awful fast, Kathryn."

I smiled. "I do it a lot. I work at a restaurant not far from here by helping cook in the kitchen."

"It shows," the sandy-haired hobbit replied as he took another bite. "The sausages are excellent."

"Thanks," I said after downing a spoonful of cereal.

It was quiet again for a moment until Boromir spoke. "Kaia said we were going to a mall today. She explained it briefly, but I still don't understand why we are going there."

"We need to buy you all more clothes," I answered. "That way you're not all wearing the same exact thing every day. That's all."

At that moment, Kaia came downstairs and into the kitchen."Hey." She was dressed for the day in a gold-colored tank top, black shorts, black combat boots, her black leather cuff with a bunch of safety pins clipped to it, and an array of random necklaces. Her dark hair was pulled off her neck in its typical messy half-bun, half-ponytail. "Are you ready to go?"

"I'm not," I said. "I still gotta fix my hair and stuff."

"Well hurry, up, woman!" Kaia exclaimed before turning to the Fellowship. "What about you guys?"

"We should be prepared to leave soon," Aragorn replied.  
"Cool." Kaia made her way over to the cupboard and grabbed a plastic cup to get herself some coffee. We all talked casually for a few more minutes before the men got up and asked what to do with their dishes. "Just throw them in the sink," Kaia said.

Big mistake. Next thing I knew, there was a loud crash as one of our plates was literally thrown into the sink from across the room. My jaw dropped as I stared at Pippin, who looked confused. "What?"

"Pippin!" I shrieked. "You don't actually throw it! She was exaggerating!"

Kaia, on the other hand, was laughing a bit. "Nice shot!"

I glared at her. "Dude! He probably just broke a plate!" As I said this, I noticed Pippin's face completely drop, and I kinda felt bad for shaming him. But even so, I ran to the sink and carefully peeked inside. There were the cracked and broken remains of what had once been a perfectly good ceramic plate. "Awww..."

I turned back around to see Merry smack Pippin, who was looking at the ground in shame. "Look what you did, Pip. Our first day here and you've broken something!"

Surprisingly, Kaia didn't even seem that mad. "Dude, it's just one plate. We have more, and no one got hurt. You don't have to freak out, just don't do it again."

Pippin looked at her worriedly. "Are you sure?" Then he glanced at me. "I'm sorry. I thought she was being serious and that's how Earth plates worked."

"Hey, the more you know, the better," Kaia said with a shrug. "And besides, it wasn't even an expensive plate anyway."

I sighed and began to carefully pick the pieces out of the sink. "Well, that's a great way to start the morning," I said with a laugh. The others laughed, too, breaking the tension. "Guess we'd better finish getting ready now."

"Finish?" I looked behind me at Frodo, who was frowning. "What do you mean, finish?"

"Like, brushing your hair, teeth, and stuff. Well...you guys can't really use our toothbrushes, though...Mouthwash'll work." I tossed the broken plate into the trash. "You four hobbits come with me. Kaia, you can take the rest over to Erin's bathroom."

She nodded. "Let's go."

We all split up from there, and I wasted no time in hurrying up the stairs to the bathroom, grabbing a bottle of blue-green mouthwash. "This is what I'm talking about, okay? It does exactly what the name implies."

"So...we just drink it?" Merry asked.

"No," I said. "You pour some into this little cup, swish it around inside your mouth for several seconds without swallowing, and then spit it out into the sink. Simple." I filled the small plastic cup and handed it to Sam, who did as instructed. "There. That'll have to do until we can buy you guys all some toothbrushes."

"What's a toothbrush?" Pippin asked as Merry took the mouthwash next.

I held up my own fluorescent yellow one. "It's this. You get it wet, then squirt some of this stuff we call toothpaste on it, and just rub it all over your teeth and tongue. We usually do it twice a day; after breakfast and right before bed." I started the process on myself to demonstrate. "See?" I said through I mouthful of bubbles. I spit into the sink and rinsed my brush out. It keeps your mouth clean and makes your breath smell nice." At that statement, I noticed Merry frown and try to check his own breath discreetly. My eyes landed on our toilet next, sparking an idea. "Oh! And if you ever have to go to the bathroom, just go in here." I lifted up the lid. "Once you're once, you wipe with this toilet paper and then flush everything away by pressing down this little handle." I showed them what I meant. "Remember that."

The nodded, taking everything in. "So...what do we do now?" Pippin asked, handing back the Listerene.

"Umm...oh! Why don't you guys go find Kaia and ask her about deodorant? I still have to get ready. You all know your way around well enough, right?" More nodding. "Good. I'll see you in a bit, okay?"

The four of them left the small room after that, leaving me alone for the moment. I plugged in the straightener Kaia and I shared before grabbing a brush to comb through my thick, dark brown hair. It didn't take long for me to untangle my blunt bangs and shoulder-length locks, then smooth it all out with the flat iron. After that, it was the simple task of applying light makeup around my brown eyes and over top of a few unsightly spots on my face, and I was done.

I looked myself over in the mirror, satisfied with how I looked before stepping out of the bathroom. Not five seconds later, my phone buzzed, saying that I got a text from Kaia. _We're all outside waiting for you_..._but no pressure or anything._ I rolled my eyes and started for the stairs when I suddenly heard the revving of a car engine, followed by multiple screams. I stopped for a moment, then tripled my speed going down the staircase. _What the heck did Kaia do to them now?_


	7. Shopping Spree

**A/N: Woah! Hey! Remember me? Erin? You know, the author who says she's gonna update regularly but never does?**

**Yeah, I'm not even gonna make that promise anymore. I really am sorry for keeping you loyal readers waiting for so long, and I'm also sorry that I've been making the same stupid excuses for not updating all the time. -_- Currently the bane of my existence is my rather embarrassing math grade, which I seriously need to fix (though that in itself is Mission: Impossible), but that really has nothing to do with why I've been seriously slacking off with this story. If you want a real answer, blame the fact that I've suddenly become a fan of the BBC TV show "Sherlock."**

**On the plus side, though...other than math, life has been pretty great! And let me just start by saying that I ACTUALLY GOT THE EXTENDED LOTR MOVIES FOR MY BIRTHDAY! After all this time, I got them! :D Sadly, I haven't had much time to watch them since they're so long (I'm like halfway through The Two Towers), but I still love them. And I also was able to buy The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey on iTunes via a gift card from a friend, so that was another amazing gift! :D :D :D Add RED's new "Release the Panic" album to the mix, and I can proudly say that I got all the things I really wanted for my birthday this year, so it was pretty fantastic.**

**Speaking of The Hobbit...Did anyone see the special Desolation of Smaug Livestream event the other day?! I was kept up to date via Tumblr, and...EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP! SO. MUCH. THRANDUIL. SO. MUCH. LEGOLAS. I don't think I'm going to make it to December alive. D: **

Chaos Unleashed: Chapter Seven

Kaia's POV

"And...there. That's pretty much all you need to know about cars." I turned around from where I stood in our driveway, then laughed when I saw the horrified and totally confused expressions on the Fellowship's faces. "What?"

Sam was the one who broke the silence, and timidly pointed at the car from where he was partially hidden behind Frodo. "...And you expect us to get _inside _that thing?"

"Yeah, pretty much." I turned and patted the roof. "It's not that bad. You'll get used to cars real quick, trust me. It's how we get around here."

"You do not travel on horseback?" Legolas questioned.

I shuddered and shook my head. "Thank God we don't. I'd probably end up dying if I tried."

"Kaia!" I jumped a bit as I looked up to see Kathryn come practically flying across the lawn. "What did you do? Why was everyone screaming?"

"She wants us to get in that...thing!" Boromir cried out before I could speak.

"And it made the most awful roaring noise!" Merry piped up. "It sounds like some wild animal that could kill us!"

I rolled my eyes and groaned. "You guys aren't ever gonna survive here if you can't adjust, and we need to get going. We're already short enough on time as it is."

Kathryn nodded. "She's right. Trust us, they won't hurt you. Cars are just another invention that's special to our world. They're actually really convenient for going places because you travel much faster than on foot." They all still looked wary. "Can you at least try it for now? Maybe we can talk about other alternatives later."

I shot her a look and stepped closer. "Other alternatives? There are no other – OW!" I hissed as she elbowed me in the gut.

Thankfully the men were able to come to a quick decision. "...All right," Aragorn said. "We have no reason not to trust you. You've been gracious to us all thus far."

"Great!" I said with a grin. "Now, who's riding with who? We've got two cars, and Kathryn and I can each drive one."

Kathryn raised a hand quickly to grab everyone's attention. "Let's make this easy instead of waiting for them to choose. I'll take Boromir, Frodo, Sam, and Legolas. Aragorn, Gimli, Merry, and Pippin can go with you."

"Sounds fine to me," I said. "Is that cool with you guys?" They nodded. "Then let's go! Kathryn, you've got your wallet, right?"

"Eeyup," she said, holding it up. "And yours?"

"In my bag," I said, gesturing to my car as I walked over and opened up the dark blue doors. I then faced the four who would be my passengers (aka victims) for the next several minutes. "Okay. Three of you can fit in the back here, and one person can sit in this seat here, next to me. Merry and Pippin should probably be in the back, but beyond that I don't care where you sit. Climb in." I ran around to the driver's side of my car and plopped down into the seat, smiling when Aragorn slid in next to me. He looked ridiculously uncomfortable, and it was pretty funny. "If you want a little more room for your legs," I said, "you can just reach under the seat and pull upwards on a bar that's down there. Then you can just slide the seat back a bit." He nodded and adjusted a little so he wasn't so cramped.

I twisted around in my seat to look at the other three, who'd been able to squeeze in together. Merry was on the left, Pippin the middle, and Gimli on the right. "Okay, now if you look down at where your hips are, you should see a little plastic box sticking up out of the seat. Can you guys find that?"

Merry nodded and tapped his for me. "Got it." The others did the same.

"Okay. Aragorn, Merry, and Gimli, you guys have to look on either side of you for one of these. It's called a seatbelt." I grabbed mine to point it out to them. "All you do is grab it, pull it so that it stretches out over your chest, and then push this little metal part on the end into that box that you found. It's a law we have here in America. You have to put them on when you're in the car."

"And what about mine, Kaia?" Pippin asked as the others clicked theirs into place.

"Your seat belt is gonna be down in the seat, too," I said. It'll only go over your legs, but that's fine since you're in the middle. Got it?"

"Got it," he echoed.

"Awesome. You're learning well," I said with a wink. I buckled myself up, then faced forward and twisted the key to bring the engine roaring to life. Just as I was about to pull out into the street and wait for Kathryn, the built-in CD player caught my eye, and my grin grew two sizes. "You know, while we're here...I might as well introduce you to some of our music..."

oOo

Kathryn's POV

"Okay, we're here!" I pulled the key from the ignition and opened my door. "Everyone out!" The five of us clambored out of the car and locked the doors just as Kaia pulled up in the parking spot beside us. A muffled thumping could be heard from inside, and as soon as one of the doors opened, the unnaturally loud pounding beat of a bass guiter blasted out into the open air. All of the guys who'd been in my car cringed and flinched as Benjamin Burnley let out a deep, traditional rock growl.

"What in the Valar is that?!" Boromir all but shouted from beside me. Legolas had his hands clapped over his sensitive elven ears and looked both irritated and scared out of his wits.

Halfway through the chorus of "Lights Out," the sound sharply cut off as Kaia removed her key and climbed out, still headbanging a bit. "Hey!"  
"Breaking Benjamin?" I asked, shooting her a look. "Already?"

"Gotta break 'em in somehow," she said with a shrug.

I rolled my eyes, but smiled anyway. "Just don't blow their eardrums out in one day, all right?"

"No promises."

I looked past her and towards the rest of the men. "Sorry, guys. You'll get that a lot with us."

To my complete shock, Gimli actually spoke up with a wide grin on his face. "What're ya apologizin' for, lass? That was great! I look forward to more long car rides if it's like that every time!"

I raised an eyebrow as Kaia laughed and gave him a brofist. "Yes!" Aragorn was watching them with a "God help me" expression.

"And she taught us how to do that, too," Merry said. "The brofist."

"Really?" I smiled as he and Pippin demonstrated. "I'm impressed." Then to Kaia, I went on. "You've taught them more than I have."

"Why wait? These are essential life skills here, Kathryn!"

I laughed and shook my head before reaching into my small over-the-shoulder bag and checking my phone for the time. "So...it's 9:30 right now. We've got until noon to get our shopping done, and then we'll grab some lunch here before heading back home. Stick with whoever drove you here," I said as I started walking across the parking lot. A thought popped into my head, and I spun on my heel to yell back to Kaia as she started leading her group to another one of the mall's entrances. "You have enough money, right?"

"Yeah! I'm good!" I nodded and face forward again as my group followed after me.

Legolas was the first one to catch up. "So we are going in there?" He looked at the big building ahead.

"Yeah," I replied.

"And what is in there, exactly?"

"Lots of stores. Stores that sell different kinds of stuff." Now Boromir and the hobbits were matching our pace as well.

"Is it much different from what we had in Middle-Earth?"

I smirked. "Very."

"How so?"

I shot him a mischevous glance. "You'll see."

The elf returned a look of confusion and looked ready to protest, but was cut off by a certain ginger hobbit. "So! ...Where are we going?"

"Don't be stupid, Pip!" Merry scolded. "We're going in there!"

"What are we doing first, then?" Pippin asked, ignoring the blonde as we approached the large glass double doors.

I pushed one open and ushered everyone inside. "We're gonna go to a store where I can get you guys some more shirts and pants. Stay with me, okay? There'll probably be a decent amount of people here, and if you guys get lost then we're all screwed." I noticed that they seemed awed by seeing a door made out of glass and tried not to laugh. "They're just doors, you guys. Nothing special." I passed through a second set of them and stepped inside the mall itself.

"B-but...they're all glass, and you..." Pippin wasn't even able to finish his sentence as he stopped dead in his tracks, his jaw dropping at the sight around us. Obviously I didn't think it was anything special; they were the same concrete walls I'd known for the past few years of my life, but the guys of the Fellowship seemed to think otherwise. I deliberately slowed my pace a bit as we made our way down the first hallway, and couldn't help but think about how similar their reactions were to when they saw the Dwarrowdelf in the movie for the first time. _If only our mall was as cool as the dwarf city in Moria._

"This is incredible," Boromir breathed. Even Legolas seemed overwhelmed as he quietly walked along on my right. "Your people built this all on their own?"

"If by 'your people' you mean humans, then yes," I said. "We don't have kingdoms and stuff here...we're all just normal humans. There's no kings or queens or anything."

"Then who rules over your country?" Legolas asked.

I thought about how to explain that. "Well...we call him the President, but...now's not really the time to explain, and Kaia would be able to tell you about it better than I could. Ask her when we get back to the house later." He nodded. "Now, if you all would just follow me..." I quickly led the guys deeper into the mall and headed straight for a men's clothing store I knew was fairly priced. We all filed inside, and again the four of them stopped to stare at all the clothing that lined the walls.

Pippin looked at a rack of jeans that stood taller than him. "What are we going to get first?"

I motioned for them to follow me a bit further as I slipped between displays and headed towards the back. "Well, the stuff in this store might be a bit big for you and Merry, Pip. I was hoping we could get a bunch of stuff for you two somewhere else, but if you find anything that you think would fit you, just let me know."

"So...we can choose anything?" Legolas asked, eyes dancing over the things hung up on the walls.

"Yep!" I said with a nod. "Look at whatever you'd like." From there we each went off on our own, browsing through all the shirts, pants, and other things that the store sold. It didn't take me long to find a couple of nice shirts for Legolas and Boromir, now that I knew what sizes fit them. Within five minutes I'd pulled out an armful of tops for the two of them to try on and went to seek them out.

I found Legolas first. "You find anything?"

He nodded and pulled a dark green button-down top with a small collar that was made of a light fabric off of a rack. "Is this all right?"

I smiled. "Yeah, that's a good color for you. Where's Boromir?"

"Over here!" the man's voice came from several feet away. I turned to see him holding up a solid teal-colored t-shirt and a pair of lighter-colored jeans. "I've found a few things, though I'm not sure how you're supposed to tell what the size is..."

I laughed a bit as he came over to us and pointed out the tag on the inside of the shirt. "See that? That's how you know what the size is. Different sizes have different letters."

"Then what does 'XL' mean?"

"Extra large."

He seemed embarassed at his mistake. "...Oh."

I laughed again. "No big deal. Just put it back and look for the same shirt with, uh...an 'M' on the tag. Medium might fit you better."

"What about mine?" Legolas asked as the Gondorian ran off to do his job.

I peered into the collar. "Yeah, that's a medium. You look like you'd be a medium, so you're fine." I smiled up at him. "We're making pretty good progress so far! You guys'll have plenty of clothes in no time."

"How much do we need?" he said, raising his eyebrows.

I shrugged. "Oh, I don't know...maybe 3 more outfits for each of you? That should be okay for now. You can mix and match stuff later."

"Ahh."

My attention was torn away from the elf when two hobbits came bounding up to me a second later. "Kathryn! Kathryn! Look what we found!"

I peered down at what Merry held in his hands and laughed. "Hey, look at that! You're on sale for six bucks!" There in his hands was a brown Lord of the Rings t-shirt with each member of the Fellowship printed onto it.

Legolas looked over my shoulder to see the shirt and made a face. "I look ridiculous."

I rolled my eyes. "I think you look fabulous."

"Can I get it, Kathryn?" Merry begged. "Please?"

"If it fits, then sure!" I grinned. "Why not?"

His eyes lit up at my reply, and he turned to give Pippin a high-five. "Where can I try it on?"

I pointed to the very back of the store where the changing rooms were. "There." At that moment, Boromir returned, waving a medium sized-shirt in his hand. "Actually, why don't you all just come back with me? Might as well try all this on now."

**A/N: Sorry if this chapter's shorter and/or suckish, but I wanted to get an update out to you guys tonight because I'll be going away on a trip to Chicago tomorrow and I'm not coming back until Sunday morning. :( Hopefully this will suffice...and hopefully the next chapter will come faster. Until then, you guys! :)**

**~Erin**


	8. More Misadventures in the Mall

**A/N: Welp, I'm finally out of school. *angels singing* I thought I wouldn't make it, but I did. :D And I'm finally starting to get back into the swing of wanting to stay up until 3 AM to write, so lucky you guys. ;) I'm reworking how I want some of the plot for this story to play out, so forgive me if these next couple chapters aren't the best. :/ I do hope you enjoy this one, though! ^^ Happy reading!**

Chaos Unleashed: Chapter Eight

Kaia's POV

I grabbed another shirt off of a shelf and tossed it into the basket. "More t-shirts. More t-shirts. Even more t-shirts! This is great!" I exclaimed, glancing behind me. "We'll never need to go shopping again!"

Aragorn looked ridiculously uncomfortable. "Were you not planning on going to any other stores?" he asked, trying to squeeze between the racks in the tightly-packed shop.

"Do we need to? Hot Topic's the only store you should ever need." I'd managed to drag everyone inside when I noticed they were having a huge 'seventy-five percent off of everything' sale. The last forty-five minutes had been spent by me combing through the place, tossing anything I thought I could afford and would fit them into a big basket. So far I had a collection of seven graphic t-shirts to be distributed amongst them all, a new necklace and _Nightmare Before Christmas_ tank top for myself, new shoes for Gimli, and a pair of bright red shorts that I knew Erin had been wanting for awhile.

Aragorn cringed as a screamo song that was playing throughout the store suddenly got really intense. "I understand that you're enjoying yourself, but...perhaps we could relocate to another area."

"Ahh, don't be such a downer," I said. "Gimli seems to be enjoying himself!" We both turned to look at the dwarf, who was doing some low-key headbanging while looking at a t-shirt wall several feet away.

"What about Frodo and Sam?" the man asked, looking around. "Where have they gone?"

"We're over here!" came Sam's voice from the checkout counter. I could just barely see the tops of their heads from where we stood. "Are we soon leavin'? N-not that this isn't a lovely place or nothin', but-" He was momentarily drowned out by the song's screaming bridge. "We were wanting to look elsewhere too, if you don't mind."

I sighed, then looked at the pile of stuff I'd gathered. "All right, I guess we can go. Just gotta pay for all this junk first." I maneuvered my way to the counter, and within ten minutes we were out of Hot Topic and back under the fluorescent glow of the main mall.

"Where to next?" Frodo asked as I handed one of my bags off to Gimli so I could pull out my phone.

"Uhh...dunno. Let me text Kathryn and find out where she's at." I started tapping away at my phone.

"Text?" Sam asked. "What's that?"

I showed him the tiny screen as we walked. "It's a way to talk to people when they're far away from you. You just type a message up using these buttons, choose who you want it to go to, and press 'send.' Then, within a matter of seconds..." I waited for the 'Message sent!' box to pop up. "See? Now Kathryn's going to get that same message from me on her phone."

All four of the guys seemed really impressed by that. "It does all that in seconds?" Aragorn asked.

"Yeah. It's pretty rad, huh?" I chuckled to myself, thinking about how Erin would be laughing at the fact that I said 'rad.' I checked the time. "Ahh...it's only 11:00. We've got time to kill." I glanced around at the others. "Where else do you guys think we should go?"

"Is there anything else that we'll need?" Aragorn asked.

I dug around through the bags that hung from my arms. "...We got you shirts...socks...deodorant...pants...I think that should be fine. Kathryn said she'd take care of getting you all underwear and stuff, so we don't have to deal with that. I guess that means we're done."

"Then what'll we do?" Sam piped up.

I shrugged. "You guys pick the next store. Any place you want, and we can mess around in there for as long as you'd like. How does that sound?"

Frodo raised a hand to get my attention, then pointed ahead of us. "What is in that one? Can we go there?"

A smile broke out on my face. "The arcade? Hell yeah! Let's go!"

oOo

Erin's POV

_Tak. _"Bored..." _Tak. _"Bored..." _Tak. _"Bored!" I tried standing the pen up on the smooth counter top for the fiftieth time unsuccessfully. I glanced around to make sure we didn't have any customers, then groaned in a way that sounded like a dying whale and draped myself across the counter. "This is mind-numbing," I muttered into the plastic.

"Erin? What are you doing?"

"I'm bored!" I shouted, snapping my head up to meet the eyes of my best friend and co-worker, Jared Heiss. "We've hardly had anyone in here all day!"

He laughed a bit, brushing his dark brown bangs out of his light blue eyes. "I know. I didn't expect it to be so quiet today." The eighteen-year-old finished his job of sweeping up the floors and put the broom and dustpan away, then came to join me in standing at the counter. "But hey, at least we're getting paid for it."

"True," I said with a nod. I stared out through the glass front walls of the store at the people passing by, then let my eyes wander around the interior of the place, looking at all the games we had. "Hey, did you ever get the chance to finish Ocarina of Time?"

"Nah," he said. "It was your game, after all. I didn't want to hold onto it for forever."

I shot him a look. "You know I trust you enough to let you keep it for as long as you need."

"I had it for over a month, though."

"It's a long game, Jared! How far did you end up getting?"

He blew air through his lips, trying to remember. "...I think I got a little ways past the Temple of Time, but I'm not sure."

"Then you should borrow it again so you can finish."

"I don't want to keep taking your games, though," he said sheepishly. "I feel like I'm constantly asking you for some."

"I _offer_ them to you," I corrected him. "There's a difference." Jared was one of the coolest guys I knew, but the one thing that he was absolutely horrible at was letting people do nice things for him for no reason.

"You shouldn't have to, though. I feel like I owe you, Erin."

I rolled my eyes. "Here we go."

"No, I'm serious!" He turned a little so he was facing me. "I feel like an idiot for never paying you back for all your favors you've done for me."

"Then stop accepting them!" I said sarcastically. "Bam. There's your solution."

"But then I'd feel like a jerk for turning you down!" he replied. Then his tone became much more sincere. "And you know that I can never say no to you."

I looked over at him from where I was leaning forward with my elbows on the counter, and he smiled, which made me sigh mentally. _Jared, what are you doing. JARED. STAHP. _He was a sweet guy, he really was...and I couldn't ask for a better co-worker. The issue was that he made it painfully obvious that he wanted to be more than friends, and I...I didn't feel the same way. We were close, but not in a way that I'd be comfortable dating him. At the same time, though, I didn't want to totally crush his spirits and flat-out tell him 'no.' So I had to pretend like I was completely oblivious to everything, even though sometimes I just wanted to scream and punch him in the face for being the least subtle person ever.

After an awkward moment of silence (which by no means was a rare occurrence), I coughed and stood up straight. "So...how long do we have until lunch break?"

He seemed to immediately snap out of his 'I'm trying really hard to be slick while hitting on you' state and looked at his watch. "About forty minutes."

I groaned again, dragging this one out for a long time as I tilted my head back to look up at the ceiling. "Kill me." My mind began to wander within a few seconds, and I thought about Kaia, Kathryn, and the Fellowship. Surprisingly, none of them had passed by GameStop yet today, so I was curious as to where they'd been and how smoothly things were going._ I really hope they're not blowing six hundred and some bucks through this. ...Well, Kathryn wouldn't, I know. But Kaia...God only knows what that girl's up to._

oOo

Kathryn's POV

I plopped down on the couch in the game room. "Well! That went better than expected!"

The others nodded in agreement. We'd all gathered in the game room after returning from our shopping expedition. Kaia and I had managed to get the guys plenty of stuff to help them blend in and become normal Earthlings, and afterward we'd all had a nice lunch at Chick-Fil-A before returning home. Legolas had been a bit picky about what he'd ordered (darn elf had insisted that the food 'wasn't being made for proper eating'), and it had taken us a complete fifteen minutes to convince Sam that public bathrooms were okay to use despite their less-than-sanitary conditions, but we'd survived.

"So what's next on the agenda?" Kaia asked from where she lazily sat on a beanbag.

"Beats me," I replied. "It's almost one now, and I gotta be at work in two hours, so...nothing too insane."

Merry then spoke up. "What's all these?" We turned to look at the young hobbit as he gestured to a shelf on the wall full of-

"Video games," Kaia said casually. Then her head snapped up a second later. "That's it! We'll play video games!"

I grinned. "Yes!"

"What's a video game?" Pippin asked next.

"Oh, only one of the greatest things mankind has ever invented," Kaia replied, already making her way over to the shelf and running a finger over them all to make a selection. "Hmm...what should we get you guys started with? Not something too difficult...and it should be multiplayer..." She stopped suddenly, the grin on her face widening as she pulled out a thin plastic case. "How about some Mario Kart?"

oOo

"HAHAHA! SUCK ON THAT, YOU UNGRATEFUL LITTLE BASTARDS!" Kaia cackled. The incessant clicking of her spinning joystick grew more intense as she rounded a sharp turn.

Merry let out a very girlish squeak as he drove Yoshi straight into a wall. "No! Not that way!"

"Merry, turn the Wii remote!" I yelled at him from behind.

"I'm trying!" he called back. He was twisting it at a crazy angle, which only ended up getting his kart turned around completely backwards.

"This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen," Legolas said from where he stood beside me.

"Maybe, but it sure is fun," I replied. My eyes widened then as I watched Toad smash through an item box. "Pippin! Pippin, throw your item!"

Kaia saw it, too. "NO! Kathryn's a liar! You absolutely should NOT throw that item!"

"Why?" the ginger asked. "What does that one do?"

"It's a blue shell!" I said. "It'll only hit whoever's in first place!"

"ASSHOLE!" Kaia yelled, though she was laughing. "Why did you tell him that?" She cringed a second later as Pippin pressed the right button, launching it forward. "NO!" She groaned in frustration as her character choice, Dry Bones, and his bike suffered a midair explosion and tumbled into a pit below.

"Kaia, you are still half a lap ahead of everyone else," Aragorn said. He was playing as Bowser, and had picked up on the game quite well, currently in third place.

"Not anymore!" she cried. "You're catching up!" She screamed as a red shell hit her from behind, slowing her down even more. "Who the hell threw that?" She frowned as Wario sped past her a second later, laughing. "WARIO! You know what? I've got something for you, Mr. Unoriginal Recolor!" She launched a green shell and sniped him easily. "YEAH! YEAH, FUCK YOU!"

I laughed as Pippin fell off of the same cliff for the fifth time. "Come on, Pip, you can do it!"

"Kathryn, how do you do a trick again?" Merry asked.

"Shake the remote as you do a jump," I said. A moment later, Yoshi did a successful flip on screen. "Yep!"

Merry then grinned devilishly from where he sat. "Ha!" He jammed the button to fire his item, and a second later the room was filled with groans (and some more swearing from Kaia) as the other players were struck by lightning.

"No!" Pippin cried. "I had a good item, too!"

"Sorry, Pip!" Merry laughed as he passed his cousin, now in tenth place.

"GOD DAMN YOU, MERRY!" Kaia yelled, leaning forward as she tried to concentrate. Aragorn was now creeping up behind her. "Get back, you! I said get back!" Out of nowhere, a banana peel found it's way between Bowser's wheels just as he was about to pull ahead, and Kaia broke out into a victory dance as she shot past the finish line in first. "Thank God! I was convinced I was gonna lose it on that last lap!"

Aragorn laughed; he was enjoying himself. "That was a good race."

As Merry and Pippin finished up in ninth and twelfth, I looked around. "That's it, then! Who won the tournament?"  
Kaia's hand shot up. "I did. I'm pretty sure Aragorn came in second."

"I was third place," Boromir piped up.

I marked it down on a chart we'd drawn up to keep track of everyone. "Okay...then it was me in fourth, Gimli in fifth, Merry in sixth, Legolas in seventh, Frodo in eighth, Sam in ninth...and Pippin in last." I shot an apologetic look his way. "Sorry, Pip."

He shrugged, though he still seemed a bit upset. "It's alright. That was a fun game either way."

"I agree!" Gimli replied. "How many games like that do you have here, lass?"

I laughed. "Oh, we've got loads of them." Several people's eyes lit up at that, and Kaia nodded in agreement. "You guys can play more if you want, but I gotta go get ready for work. I leave in ten minutes." I gave a wave and then hurried up the stairs to my room, laughing to myself as I heard Kaia declare another match from below. "Oh my God...I have the Fellowship of the Ring playing Mario Kart in my house. This is awesome."


	9. Celebratory Competition

**A/N: Fixed an error or two that someone pointed out to me with this chapter. Nothing else new. :)**

Chaos Unleashed: Chapter Nine

Kathryn's POV

"Rise and shine!" I shouted, yanking my curtains open and letting the bright sunlight of an early June morning flood my bedroom.

Immediately, I heard the groans of the two hobbits who'd been curled up in their makeshift beds fast asleep. "...What are you doing?" Frodo mumbled.

"Come on!" I said, moving over and nudging the two lumps with my foot. "Get up! We've got stuff to do today!"

Frodo's dark mop of curly hair finally shifted and rose as he sat up, rubbing his eyes. "Like what?"

"That's for me to know and you to find out," I said, wiggling my eyebrows in a semi-seductive way. Frodo rolled his eyes.

"Why's today so special, then?" Sam asked, also slowly starting to wake up.

"Because it's your two-week anniversary on Earth!" I said. "We've gotta celebrate somehow, right?"

Frodo sighed, standing up and stretching. "I'd be content with celebrating by sitting downstairs with some of that lemonade you always make and several new pages of Homestuck to read, honestly."

I laughed. "So would I, but Erin, Kaia and I all agreed that we should do something special. So hurry up and get dressed! Everyone else is already up. We'll be downstairs in the kitchen eating." With that, I left the hobbits to do their thing and quickly ran downstairs.

Once I got to the kitchen, I said hi to everybody and made a beeline for the fridge to grab my half-finished glass of apple juice before jumping up on the counter to sit. Boromir, Aragorn, Legolas, Merry, and Pippin were all gathered around the dining table, whether they were sitting or standing. Kaia stood behind me at the coffee maker, waiting for it to finish up. "Frodo and Sam are up now," I said. "And they both shower at night, so they shouldn't be long." I looked around to see who was missing. "Where's Gimli and Erin?"

"Gimli's in the shower upstairs...ah, the other upstairs," Merry answered, jabbing a thumb towards the other half of our house.

"And Erin is still in her room," Legolas said as well. "I do not know what exactly she is doing, but she refused to let me back inside."

Kaia laughed quietly from behind me, and I smirked. "Don't worry, we know exactly what she's doing."

"She'd better not take forever, though," my best friend said as she poured a fresh cup of coffee for herself, then another one which was handed over the counter to Aragorn. "We gotta go soon, don't we?"

I checked the time on my iPod. "Yeah. It's almost nine."

Kaia nodded and set her coffee down before running out of the kitchen. "I'll go get her!" Once she disappeared, I took a quick sip of her coffee.

"So...where are we going?" Pippin asked. "You said you were gatherin' us here for something."

I nodded. "Yep!" At that moment, Gimli walked in, and I nodded to him before continuing. "Since you guys have been here on Earth with us for a whole two weeks now, we figured it was time we all go out and do something awesome."

"And what is it that we're doing, Kathryn?" Boromir asked.

I grinned. "I can't tell you. Not until we get there, at least. I mean, we've got a lot of stuff planned for today, but..." Frodo and Sam appeared right as I finished talking, and I smiled. "Hey guys. What do you want to eat? Cereal?"

Sam nodded. "And one of those leftover hash browns from yesterday, if you don't mind."

I nodded and went back to the fridge to grab one. The Fellowship had gotten settled in and adjusted to our weird Earth customs fairly easily over the past fourteen days, and I for one was having an awesome time living with them. Several of the guys had picked up an interest in video games, and I'd even managed to coax Frodo into watching a bunch of my favorite animes. We'd also gotten Merry hooked on Tumblr, and Gimli had come to like watching people like Smosh and PewDiePie on YouTube (though that one was all Erin's doing). Aragorn had somehow gotten incredibly good at Assassin's Creed over the past several days, and every now and then he and Boromir would turn on the Xbox for a game of Resident Evil or Black Ops. Merry and I had watched Star Wars together once, too, and he was a fan of that now. It was awesome. I'd never imagined that some of them would get so into our weird modern-day forms of entertainment, but they had.

Finally, Kaia returned to our kitchen as Frodo and Sam finished eating, dragging Erin along behind her. I caught my friend's attention. "Is it ready?"

Erin nodded with a wink. "Yep. It's ready."

I returned the wink dramatically. "Good." She laughed. "Then are we ready to go? We've gotta be at the surprise place in half an hour."

Everyone nodded, and Kaia grinned. "Great! Grab anything you think you'll need and get out to a car!" With that, everyone dispersed to go slip on some shoes or put away dishes or whatever. I ran back up to my room one last time to grab my headphones, then stopped when I realized I wouldn't even need my iPod. I set it down on my dresser and sped back downstairs, locking the front door behind me as I left the house and made sure everyone was out. I hopped into my car with Frodo, Sam, Aragorn, and Legolas, then started the engine and slowly backed out of our driveway.

After a moment of silence, Legolas spoke up. "So you really can not tell us anything about where it is we are going?"

I smirked and shook my head. "Nope. Not one little detail." I glanced around my car to see what they were wearing. _Hmm. Frodo's gonna be spotted too easily in that white shirt. Sam's okay...brown is a dark color. Leggles is in grey, so he's good...Aragorn's not in anything too bright...though I doubt he'll be able to hide the design on his shirt under a black light. Oh well. His chest'll be covered anyway. _I laughed a little at the bewildered looks on their faces when they saw how I was checking them out. _Maybe we should've warned them to dress dark. Oh well._

oOo

Erin's POV

I laughed even harder as someone's heel accidentally slipped and jabbed me in the stomach. "Hey! Watch it up there!"

Boromir scoffed. "You have no right to talk! This was your insane idea!"

I just rolled my eyes, though I knew he couldn't see it. "Well it was either this or we wait another hour for me to find another ride. Which would you pick?"

"How about you just get your license, Erin?" Kaia yelled back at me from the driver's seat.

"And drive what car?" I shot back, but I knew she was only kidding around. Since there were six of us leftover after Kathryn loaded her car up and room for only five in Kaia's car, I became a problem-solver and chose to lay on the floor of the car in the back, then have Merry, Pippin, and Boromir climb in over top of me and prop their feet up slightly against the back of the seats so they wouldn't crush me. It was the best way to avoid getting pulled over by a cop for having too many people in the car, in my opinion.

Suddenly, I heard Gimli laugh from where he sat up front with Kaia. "Ahh, I love this song!" The music got a bit louder afterwards, and I could only assume that he'd been the one to turn it up.

"Yeah, man!" Kaia agreed. "We As Human's awesome!"

I grinned from where I lay, staring up at nothing but three pairs of legs, and sang along with my friend to the second verse of "Dead Man." "Gimli, I'm proud of you," I said as I caught a glimpse of him headbanging. Who knew a dwarf would be so into rock? "We've raised you well in these last two weeks."

"I prefer the other band you showed me once," Boromir cut in. "RED, was it?"

My grin widened. "Yes! They're my absolute favorite!"

I heard Kaia laugh from up front, and suddenly the intro to their song "Release the Panic" started playing. "Speaking of RED..."

"NO!" I shouted. "Don't do this to me! I can't sing while I'm laying on the floor!"

"Guess you'll just have to be tortured by listening to them, then."

"Listening to Mike Barnes is never torture and you know it."

"Touché."

As the drum solo introduction ended and the heavy riffs of the guitars blasted through the speakers, Merry spoke. "Can't say it's my favorite, but it's better than those other guys you made us listen to after we lost that bet last week."

"Who, One Direction?" Pippin asked.

"Pippin!" Kaia shouted. "No foul language in my fucking car!"

I lost it then and started laughing like an idiot, only to stop when someone accidentally kicked me in the ribs as we went over a bump in the road. "Ow!"

"Sorry!" Merry cried. "But yes, Pip. They were awful."

"That's the spirit!" I replied. "I'm just glad that none of you actually like them."

"If you ask me, their shorts are a bit too short for their own good," the blonde hobbit said.

I smiled. "Don't worry. They're practically a thing of the past now. I just like bringing them up every now and again to use as a torture device. Though I don't understand how people like Justin Beiber have still managed to hang on to fame for this long. Even after all these years, he's still popular."

Kaia retched. "Oh, God. You guys are making me sick with that kind of talk." The first RED song ended, and she skipped over "Perfect Life" to let "Die For You" play instead.

"Didn't you say he just came out with a new album, too?" Boromir said.

"Sadly, yes," I answered with a shudder. "I swear, one of these days his fans are all gonna snap and end up in a psych ward."

"If they're not there already," Kaia pointed out.

We went over another bump, and I yelped as Merry narrowly missed kicking me in the eye. "Are we there yet, Kaia? This might not have been as good of a plan as I thought."

"Yeah," she said. "I just pulled into the parking lot, actually. Kathryn beat us here." A minute later, the music clicked off, along with the engine, and before I knew it the guys above me had scrambled out of the back seat, leaving me to pull myself out. I flipped over onto my stomach and crawled out onto the pavement, hopping back to my feet and dusting myself off as someone approached me.

Looking up, I saw my favorite elf shooting me a quizzical look. "What? You gotta do what you gotta do."

He laughed. "Thank the Valar I was not in that car with you."

"Hey, shut it!" I said, smacking him lightly. "You'd better watch what you say to me, or I'll put you in the hallway for the night." We both laughed and followed everyone else into the building up ahead.

It was Frodo who first noticed the sign on the door. "Girls? What is 'laser tag?'"

The grin on my face widened even more. "Oh, it's awesome. It's this really fun game where you get to run around a big arena shooting people with lasers to get points, and whichever team gets the most points wins. It's also the reason why I'm dressed like a ninja today." I looked myself over with pride. Black t-shirt, black skinny jeans, black Converse. I was prepared.

"But what is a laser?" Aragorn asked, confused.

"It'll all be explained to you once we get in," Kathryn reassured him. "Now come on. Follow Kaia." We all filed into the dark room ahead and sat down in the mini-theater, facing the screen.

I stuck with Legolas and poked him in the ribs once we were seated. "Hey." I whispered. "Elves are supposed to be really agile, right?"

"I suppose so. Why?"

"Cause I want agile people on my team, that's why." I ignored his confused look and focused on the employee who walked in and started coaching us on how to play. She ran a video that explained the rules, we got to ask a couple questions, and then it was time to choose teams. I ran right up to the red team's side and grabbed a vest to slide over my head. When Boromir came over to pick one up, I stopped him. "Sorry, only awesome people can be on my team."

He raised an eyebrow. "Is that a challenge?"

"If you want it to be," I said with a smirk.

"You should know that I picked up on those rules rather well," he warned.

"That's fine. I'm still gonna show you who's boss out there."

He nodded once. "Very well. You're on."

"Watch your back, Gondorian." I watched as he turned and walked over to the blue team, along with Aragorn, then frowned as I turned to the faithful elf who stood beside me. "Oh, frick. They've got both the men on their team. I feel like Aragorn's gonna be really good at this."

Legolas shrugged. "Well, we have both you and Kaia. Are you not rather experienced with this?"

"I've played enough times to know what I'm doing," I said. "Kaia's pretty good, so...that's a plus. But Kathryn's played more than I have, and she's on the other team." As it stood, the blue team consisted of Kathryn, Boromir, Aragorn, Frodo, Gimli, and Pippin. On the red team was me, Kaia, Merry, Legolas, and Sam. They had an extra person, but that didn't matter much to me. I caught Kathryn's eye from across the small room. "Are we ready to go?"

She nodded, then yelled to get everyone's attention. "Hey! Ok, you guys remember the basics, right? Hold up the gun and press the trigger to shoot. Hit people on the chest and shoulders that are on the opposite team. Go anywhere you want, but try and make it to the other team's base and hit that to get the most points!" Everyone nodded in understanding. "Go!"

Immediately, I took off and ran right out into the dark arena, heading for the stairs that led to the upper levels of the 3-floor arena. I found a spot in the corner that was partially shielded by a large wall with holes in it here and there and crouched down on the floor, looking around as I saw others take their places. I heard the referee shout out a countdown from below, and as soon as some crazy dubstep song started playing as background music and all the black lights went up, it was game on.

My strategy for the game was rather simple to start out. I stayed hidden where I was for the first few minutes, peeking out and shooting people whenever I saw the blue team pass by. It was pretty easy to hit the Fellowship, as they were mostly running around in circles, blindly trying to find their way through the confusing area, but eventually I was found out when I was able to get three hits on Boromir in a row. The Gondorian spun around just in time to see me try and duck, but I knew it was too late when I heard the pounding of his feet. He was coming for me.

I quickly readied my gun and jumped to my feet, kicking it into high gear as I narrowly missed colliding with him once I ran out from behind the wall. From there it was an all-out sprint as I started weaving through pillars in an attempt to lose him. It worked, because after a couple seconds I ducked behind a pillar to catch my breath, then peered out, seeing no sign of him anywhere.

I noticed that I was nearby where the blue team's base was located on the first floor, and slowly snuck over to where I could see the person they'd posted to be their lookout, Frodo, from above. I crouched down to where he couldn't see me for a moment, then jumped up and shot him repeatedly. He looked around wildly, but not up to see where his attacker was coming from, so I was safe. I slipped down a ramp and repeated the process on the second level, and then took a risky move by running down to the first level and right up to their base, getting in three good hits on their base before he shot me and I had to run.

After awhile, the first round ended, with our team being the victors. I laughed as I made my way back to our team's base, meeting up with everyone else. "That was good," I said. "Round 2?"

Kaia nodded. "We're signed up for three rounds, so yeah." We all quickly spread out once more, and I ran to a different hiding point on the first floor for the beginning of the next round.

After the first two minutes or so, I managed to get in a heated chase around the area with Boromir again, only this time I was the one chasing him. He managed to turn around and zap me once or twice, but he had a hard time losing me. I only stopped when I was completely out of breath, deciding to duck behind a collection of four pillars that arced out from the wall.

Since I still had lots of momentum from my run, I crashed right into the person hiding out behind the pillars and ended up falling right on my butt. "Oh frick! I'm sorry!" I looked up to make sure I hadn't run right into an enemy, and was relieved to see Legolas standing there, offering a hand to help me up. "Thanks," I said breathlessly.

He nodded. "Not a problem." We stood there in silence for a minute, scoping out the territory around us by peeking through the cracks between the pillars. At one point I glanced over my shoulder and was incredibly thankful for the darkness, because in daylight it would've been easy to see how much I blushed as I saw how close we were. He was sort of leaning right over me, to the point where I could feel his breath on the back of my neck. "What's your plan?"

I blinked, coming out of my momentary shock when he spoke. "Uh, I...I don't know. I'm probably gonna run to go take some people out in a minute."

"All right. I will cover you."

Now I looked back at him again. "Really?"

"Of course. You run, hit as many of the other team as you can, and I will watch for those who try to hit you."

I thought about that. "...Okay. Let's do it. I'm aiming for Boromir, personally. Is he out there?"

Legolas looked out, then turned back to me and nodded. "Yes. He is over to your left, past the next two sets of pillars."

I grinned. He was going down. "Awesome. Let's go!" Together we snuck out of our hiding spot, and I worked my way over to where Legolas said he was hiding. The look on Boromir's face once he spun around to see me shooting him repeatedly was hilarious. "SURPRISE!" I laughed as he took off running, giving chase once again as Legolas stayed with me. This time, though, I lost Boromir quicker than I expected, and frowned as I slowed to a walk. _Where'd he go?_

Out of nowhere, the man jumped out at me from behind a wall, laughing like a madman as he shot me repeatedly. I tried to back up, but just bumped into Legolas again. "You're done for!"  
_FRICK! I walked right into that!_ "Legolas, GO!" I shouted, turning and booking it out of there, but I wasn't fast enough. He hit me way too many times.

A round and a half later, my team was gathered back at our base after the final round was over, and everyone was totally out of breath. We'd all gotten to look at each other's total scores, and the overall dominators had been Aragorn, Legolas, and Kathryn. The blue team had won two out of the three rounds, winning the match overall. It had been incredibly fun, though (despite how gross and sweaty we all were).

As I climbed back onto the floor of Kaia's car, I sighed. "That was awesome, you guys."

The others agreed with me as we all got buckled in and ready to go. "We should definitely do that again some other time," Merry said.

"I still don't understand how I didn't get hardly any points compared to you all," Pippin pouted.

"Because you never hit where you were supposed to on the base, Pip!" his blonde cousin laughed. "You were shooting everywhere possible but the target."

"Oh, shut it!"

I laughed. "Hey, you did good for your first time playing laser tag. I was worse than you once I started."

"And apparently you still aren't any good," Boromir said cockily, "seeing as I beat you on my first time."

"Hey!" I snapped. "That wouldn't have happened if you hadn't completely ambushed me at the end there! Like half of your fricking team ganged up on me!"

He scoffed. "Well, you had the elf and your bodyguard for half of the game!"  
"I did not!"

"Did too!"

"Did not!"  
"Fuck you both, I kicked ass in that game!" Kaia cut in. We all laughed as she started the car and pulled out of the parking lot.


	10. The Ultimate Dance-Off

**A/N: Hello, my lovely readers! :) Just wanted to let you know that I'm leaving to spend 4 days at Creation Festival on June 26th, so this is the last update you'll get until I'm back home on the 30th. And even then, I might not update right away. Also, I just wanted to say thank you to you guys really quick. I've gotten a lot of reviews where people have said the nicest things about me or to me, so...thank you! ^^ You're all awesome. I couldn't ask for a better audience to share my stories with. :) **

**And with that in mind, I hope you enjoy this next chapter. On with the fic!**

Chaos Unleashed: Chapter Ten

Kaia's POV

I walked back to the large picnic table our group was seated at, juggling four ice cream cones in my hand. "Okay, who got what?"

Pippin's hand immediately shot up. "I had chocolate!"

"Same for me!" Sam said.

"Two chocolates..." I repeated, handing them out. "And who had the strawberry vanilla swirl?"

"That would be mine," Frodo answered.

I handed the hobbit his cone and then plopped down next to Aragorn, starting to lick my own black cherry one. I looked over at Erin then. "Are you gonna make the next ice cream run?"

She nodded, wiping a bit of ketchup from her mouth. "Sure. Hey, anyone else want ice cream now?"

"I'll have a vanilla chocolate swirl," Boromir said.

"And a regular vanilla for me, if you don't mind," Legolas also spoke up.

"Got it," my best friend nodded. She stood up and gathered up her trash before heading back over to the little roadside shop we'd stopped at for lunch. It was a cool place. Family-run, with homemade food that made you want to jump up and praise the Lord once you tasted it. Everyone had gotten either cheeseburgers, hamburgers, subs, or chicken fingers, and we'd all split a couple orders of fries to go along with it. We'd also introduced them to different types of soda besides root beer that we'd had in the fridge a couple nights ago.

I looked up at the man sitting next to me. "You're not getting anything?"

He shook his head. "The chicken was more than enough to fill me."

"Was it good?"

Aragorn smiled. "It was. Not as good as the other place we went to last week, though."

"Chick-Fil-A? Yeah, I guess so. They're pretty good."

Gimli caught my attention from across the table. "So what else is in store for us today, lass?"

"Oh, just you wait," I said with a grin. "We've got a couple more activities planned. Actually..." I reached into my pocket and checked my phone for the time. "...we should probably get going soon. I've gotta drop you guys off at home so I can get to work on time."

"When do you work today?" Sam asked.

"From one to six," I replied. "Nothing crazy. And it's Sunday, too, so we probably won't be too busy in the store."

"So we will be with Erin and Kathryn, then?" Aragorn asked.

I nodded. "Yep. Both of them take Sundays off."

At that moment, Erin returned with more ice cream and sat down next to Sam as she passed everything out. "I heard my name?"

"We were talking about how you and Kathryn are in charge for the rest of the afternoon," I said.

She smiled. "Oh, yeah! Today's gonna be fun."

"Why do I feel like that should worry us?" Frodo asked, smiling.

Erin shot him a look. "Oh, shut up." The hobbit just laughed.

Boromir pointed at the cone in Erin's hand, frowning. "What kind of ice cream is that?"

"Orange pineapple," she said as she took a huge lick of it to catch the melting parts.

He wrinkled his nose in disgust. "That sounds terrible."

"Well it's better than yours, I can bet you that," she said, sticking out her tongue at him.

"Hey, hurry up and finish that, okay?" I said. "We've gotta get going so I'm not late for work. My shift starts in half an hour."

"'Kay."

Suddenly, we heard a shout from the other end of the table, and I looked over to see Merry jump up from his seat, his green shirt covered in ice cream. Legolas was laughing hysterically, and Pippin and Kathryn looked horrified. "What the hell happened?" I asked.

Legolas glanced over at me. "Pippin wasn't paying attention to how he was holding his ice cream."

"I'm sorry, Merry!" Pippin cried. "I...I'll get you a new shirt!"

"We can wash it, Pip, don't worry," Kathryn said.

"But what am I supposed to do about this?" Merry exclaimed, waving a hand towards the big brown blob on his chest.

Kathryn was smiling, too. "Come on. Let's go get some napkins." She stood up and dragged him along with her to go ask an employee for some help.

Legolas was still laughing, and I looked over at him again. "You found that pretty funny, huh?" I saw Erin get up from the table, and assumed she was done eating.

The elf nodded. "You had to have seen Merry's face," he said. "It was hilarious."

Erin stopped walking once she was behind him and smirked. "You think it's that funny, huh?" In the blink of an eye, she'd taken the remainder of her melted cone and plopped it on the top of Legolas' head.

The elf immediately jumped up with a shout, grabbing the cone stub off of his head and staring at Erin in shock. "Erin! What did you do?"

Now Erin was the one laughing as Legolas stood there with melted ice cream in his hair and hand. "What does it look like, genius? I put ice cream on your head." Legolas was looked kinda mad, but you could tell he was trying to hold back a smile. He took a step closer to Erin, holding up his sticky hand threateningly. "Woah, woah, woah," she said, backing up a bit. "No need to get violent!" She screamed a tiny bit as Legolas reached out and grabbed her with his messy hand, getting it on her arm. "Way to go!" she said. "Look what you did!"

He was laughing now. We all were. "Look what I did? I believe you were the one who started it." He tried to smear it on her some more, but Erin ducked behind a tree.

"Are we starting a food fight?" I asked. "I'm game!"

"No, we're not!" Erin called out from behind her tree. "Legolas is being a bully, that's all!"

He laughed again as he tried to fake her out, but it didn't work. The elf finally stepped back and raised his hands in surrender. "All right, I give up. But _you_ are going to go get napkins to clean this up."

Erin scoffed. "Screw you! You can shower once we get home."

"Yeah, that's probably not gonna come out with just napkins," I laughed. Legolas sighed and shot Erin a friendly glare.

At that moment, Kathryn and Merry came back. The former stopped when she saw Legolas and Erin with ice cream all over them and made a confused face. "...Well! I guess I walked out at the wrong time!"

oOo

Erin's POV

I finished scrubbing the last of the sticky orange ice cream off of my arm and threw the dishcloth in the sink before walking back out into the game room. Legolas had already gone upstairs to take a shower, Merry was changing, and Kaia was gone to work. The rest of us were gathered in the game room once again.

"So now what?" Pippin asked.

Kathryn looked at me. "What do you think, Erin? Should we start the dancing lessons?"

I grinned. "Oh, of course! These guys need to learn how to dance like Earthlings!"

She laughed, but the others looked totally lost. "Dance lessons?" Boromir asked. "That's your big surprise?"

"But they're not just any dance lessons," I said, wiggling my finger at him. I jumped over the couch and turned on the TV, then pressed the power button on the Nintendo Wii to start it up. "This is gonna be a hardcore competition!"

"Again?" Merry said as he walked into the room, now wearing a fresh shirt. "Well, hopefully it can't be any crazier than Mario Kart."

Kathryn and I looked at each other and immediately burst out laughing. "Oh no..."Aragorn muttered. That just made us laugh even harder. Kathryn inserted the disc into the Wii's slot, and a second later the Just Dance title theme came floating out of the speakers.

I grabbed four remotes and connected them with the Wii, then turned to Kathryn. "You wanna explain how this works?"

"You know I do," she said with a grin. "Okay. So we have everyone's name written on a slip of paper and inside this glass jar." I held up the jar that was set next to the TV to show them. "Between the three of us girls, we've picked what we think are the most...ahh, _interesting_ songs for you all to dance to, and for each song we're gonna randomly draw names out of the jar to decide who's gonna be dancing. No one's allowed to sit out. Be good sports, okay?" They all looked really on edge about it, but nodded nonetheless. "Now how the game works is simple. Once the song we select for you starts, there will be a person that shows up on the screen. All you have to do is hold the Wii remote in your hand and copy their moves like you're looking in a mirror. Got it?" More nods. "Then let's get started! Erin, what is our first song going to be?"

I looked back at Kathryn. "Actually, why don't you and I do our song first? That way we can show them how it's done."

She raised an eyebrow. "You're challenging me early, huh? Have you forgotten that I've beaten you the last two times we did this?"

I stuck my tongue out at her. "Don't get cocky. I'll beat you so hard you won't even be able to see straight." A chorus of "oooohs" was heard from the others.

She gave a curt nod. "You're on. Hand me that remote."

I did so, never once breaking eye contact with her until I had to turn and select the song "Rock n' Roll" by Skrillex. We quickly took our positions, and the others shifted so that they could see both us and the screen above. A second later, the music was up, and my full attention was on the robotic guy in the center of the screen, making sharp movements with my hands to match his as the song began.

The Fellowship seemed pretty amused as they watched. "What is he wearing?" Merry asked, pointing to our onscreen guide.

"You know, just your normal dancing clothes," Kathryn answered sarcastically. Some of the guys laughed.

I scoffed as I started jumping to the side and pulling my hands behind my head, just as I should've. "I don't know about you, but that's what I wear all the time when I dance."

Within a minute or so, the dance had quickly gotten way more intense, though Kathryn and I were still neck and neck at about two and half stars. She was a step or two ahead of me, so I focused on nailing the air guitar move as best as I could. It was funny, actually...the room was almost dead silent except for the sounds coming from the TV. Kathryn and I always faced off against each other with this song, so we knew how serious this was, but I was surprised that the guys weren't asking a butt ton of questions.

Once the song ended, the others began to applaud us, but Kathryn jumped up and down laughing. "HA! I did it! I beat you again!"

I waved her off. "Oh, shut it."

"That's three in a row, Erin? Where you at? Where's your dancing skills?"

I just flopped back down on the couch. "I'll get you next time. You'll see."

"Yeah, that's what you said three challenges ago."

"Oh, shut up! We were only like...five hundred points apart!"

"Who's next?" Aragorn asked.

Kathryn walked over to the jar and pulled out two more names. "This one's a duet," she said, wiggling her eyebrows suggestively. "We've got Erin again...and Gimli!" I looked over at the dwarf, who looked a bit surprised to hear his name.

I sighed and rose from my seat again. "Well, c'mon! You and me, let's go!"

Interestingly enough, the short little man just laughed and strode up to the TV with me. "Ahh, this'll be a piece of cake. It looked easy enough to me!"

_Keep in mind that you just watched two experts do it_, I thought, but said nothing. I just smiled knowingly at him and looked to Kathryn. "And the song is?..."

"Run the Show," she said, then immediately started laughing.

"Oh, balls!" I cried. "This one? Really?"

"What?" Gimli asked. "What's so bad about this one?"

I shot the dwarf a look. "...You'll see." It wasn't the fact that the song was hard for me to do. I'd done all these songs at least ten times over. The issue with this one was that it feature two girl characters who liked to do a lot of...shaking. Shaking their womanly assets like their lives depended on it. I knew it would be hilarious to watch Gimli do it, I just...I really didn't want the rest of the Fellowship to see me doing it. I exhaled and selected my character as the screen came up, choosing to be on the left. _Whatever. Just go for it. Hopefully Gimli will provide enough of a distraction and they won't look at you._

Kathryn could sense my nervousness as Gimli chose the other girl, and the song began. "What's wrong, Erin? Don't you love this song?"

I glared at her. "Shut your mouth hole!" My head snapped back towards the TV to focus as Kathryn walked away.

oOo

Kathryn's POV

I swear, I've never laughed so much in my entire life. Watching Erin and Gimli have to dance to one of the worst songs in the game, and then to see the Fellowship reacting to it...God, it was priceless. I was trying to keep track of how many times Gimli hit Erin, but I lost count after about thirty seconds into it. As soon as the first move came up that involved him popping his hips out, everyone lost it. Gimli looked like he wanted to punch us all in the face, and I'm pretty sure Frodo was tearing up. "Dude...this is perfect," I gasped between laughter.

"I know!" he said, clapping like a retarded seal as he laughed silently.

I nodded and continued to watch the dancers ahead of us. Erin really did know what she was doing, but you could tell she was really uncomfortable doing a dance like this in front of a bunch of dudes. I doubted that they noticed, though. They were laughing at Gimli too much.

"Come on, Gimli!" Boromir laughed. "You're not getting the hips right! It's all in the hips!"

"I'd like to see you move your hips like that!" the dwarf shot back. Boromir answered by suddenly jumping out and doing a couple hip thrusts towards Gimli before he got hit in the stomach with a Wii remote. He went back to his spot after that. "That doesn't count!" Gimli snapped, but then tried to rush back into position as another chest-popping move came up.

Legolas was standing next to me, looking really weirded out. "This song makes absolutely so sense."

"Not many of these songs do," I said. "It's the sad thing about most music these days."

"And the dancing is...definitely not what we would do in Middle-Earth, either," he muttered.

I cracked a smile again as Erin jokingly yelled at Gimli for knocking her in the ribs with his flailing. "What did you expect? Ballroom dancing?"

He laughed and shook his head. "Of course not. I just did not expect it to be so...provocative."

I shrugged. "Welcome to the twenty-first century."

"OW! For the love of all that is holy, Gimli! Stop hitting me!" Erin was laughing as she glanced over at the dwarf.

"Sorry lass, sorry!" Gimli sputtered, trying desperately to keep up. It wasn't working. He was about two and a half moves behind. Then came Gimli's solo sequence, which was pretty much just Erin pointing towards him as he stared at the screen blankly, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. More laughter floated about the room.

I looked over at Erin again and suddenly saw a worried expression come over her face. _Oh shit...it's the part she hates, isn't it? Yeah, it is! _The move called for the two partners to face each other and shake like there was no tomorrow, and the room instantly erupted with laughter as we watched Gimli trying to shake his ass along with Erin, then completely miss the moment where they had to flip around and do it back to back.

I looked over at Erin, too, and certainly didn't miss her bright red face as we all laughed at the ridiculous move. I let out a catcall, much to her annoyance, and then glanced over to see Legolas looking _really _uncomfortable, which made me laugh even more. The best part was that the ass-and-boob-shaking lasted a good twenty seconds, and I'm pretty sure everybody was in tears by the time they finished the song. We applauded them as Gimli huffed and threw his remote into the couch. "I am _not_ doing that again!"

Erin just plopped right down on the floor and looked like she wanted to kill herself. I crawled over to her and laughed. "Hey, what's wrong? Your twerking got you a new high score!"

She smacked me. "Oh, shut up! That was horrible! Of all songs, I had to dance to that one? I felt like a hooker."

That just made me laugh even more. "Oh, lighten up. He didn't even look at you, he was watching Gimli." That was an outright lie, but whatever. Erin didn't respond. I got up and went back to the front of the room, pulling out the names of Aragorn, Merry, Gimli again, and Legolas to dance to "Oops! I Did It Again" by Britney Spears. _Erin'll get a kick out of this._

oOo

I gotta say, this was definitely the highlight of my night. There were so many times when I was convinced that I was gonna die from choking on air, I was laughing so hard. After watching Aragorn attempt to channel his inner Britney Spears and getting some scarily accurate hip thrusts, we had Frodo and Sam dance to a romantic duet of "I've Had The Time Of My Life." I'm pretty sure Erin got a video on her phone of them trying to salsa and then go for a dip with each other. Boromir did what I'm pretty sure was the best rendition of "Maneater" that could ever exist after that (with several hip thrusts, most of which were either pointed at Aragorn or Gimli), and when his final pose ended, we all cheered.

I laughed as he walked over to me and handed the remote back. "I'm pretty sure you just lost all your man points from that dance."

He laughed, too. "It was strangely fun, though."

"Oh?" I asked. "You got something to tell us, Boromir?"

He frowned, totally confused. "I...I'm sorry? I don't understand?"

"Gaaaaaaaay," Erin whispered as she walked past him. I burst out laughing, knowing that she was only joking around. We did that to each other all the time.

Boromir's eye flew wide open, however. "What? I am most certainly not-"

"Oh my word, calm down! It's okay that you're a flaming homosexual. It's okay," Erin continued.

He narrowed his eyes at her. "I am not!"

"Oh, please. With all those hip thrusts you did to Aragorn? It's no wonder you're sharing the same room. Just remember man...he has a girlfriend."

I was gasping for air. "E...Erin!" She burst out laughing as well, and only then did Boromir seem to understand the joke.

"You two are ridiculous!" he said, but I saw him fighting a smile as he walked away.

"Okay, okay." I took a couple calming breaths and then looked at my brunette friend. "Every time you walk past him now, can you please just whisper 'gay' in his ear?"

She laughed. "Dude, yes! It's official, this is a thing. We're doing this." We laughed. "Who's next?"

"Pippin is!" Sam cried out from where he'd just drawn a name. "And he's got a solo!"

The hobbit in question actually seemed excited to dance as he sauntered up and took a remote. "What song is it?"

Sam squinted at my scribbled handwriting. "'Umbrella' by...Rihanna."

"Oh my God!" Erin yelled, then started laughing all over again. I smothered her face with a pillow to get her to shut up as we all watched Pip intently while he danced. He took up the starting pose and we all waited with bated breath, excited to see the failure.

...But out of nowhere, he hit the first move spot on, with more pop in his hips and shoulder shakes than anyone else. Laughter and cries of shock were heard as Pippin continued to extremely over-exaggerate almost every single move, to the point where if it asked him to casually stick his right hand out, he acted like he was trying to punch someone in the face. It was hilarious, but he was somehow really good at the dance.

Then came the move that had everybody on the floor. The move was easy enough; just drag your left hand down and wiggle your hips around a little. But Pippin decided it would be cooler to mover his hips around a _LOT _more than what was necessary, then flash us a quick wink and suggestive eyebrow wiggle before moving on. We all laughed so hard, I had to grab onto Merry's shoulders from where I sat behind him on the top of the couch for support. Pippin was literally doing every single move like he was trying to seduce us. It was the best thing ever.

"The hip wiggles!" Merry laughed from beneath me. "I can't handle the hip wiggles!" Someone snorted from laughing so hard (it might've been me...hell if I know), which sent everyone into another fit. By the time Pippin was finished, we were all dying of laughter and he'd scored four stars.

"All hail Peregrin Took, master of Just Dance!" Erin called out. We all burst into applause once again, and he took a bow before sitting back in his seat.

I got my breath back. "Okay...I don't think I can handle any more of this for today. I'm gonna end up passing out from laughing so much."

Aragorn nodded. "Kaia will definitely regret missing this for work."

"Sucks to suck," Erin replied. He laughed. "So...what do we do now?"

I shrugged as I glanced outside. "Well, it's not even dinnertime yet, and it has to be dark out for the last activity we have planned for today. So...I guess you're free to do whatever until dinner's ready. I'm making tacos tonight."

"Yes!" Merry and Pippin high-fived.

"Mind if I help you?" Sam asked.

"Of course not! You've been my assistant chef for awhile now, you know I don't care," I smiled. I waved my hands at everybody else to break them up as Erin went to shut off the Wii. "Now go! Go do stuff!" I looked back at Sam. "Come on. We've got a lot of taco meat to make in the next hour."

**A/N: ...I really hope I did the Just Dance scenes justice. I'm worried that I totally failed at describing what was happening during the dances. :/ Hopefully you guys like it anyway. :) Don't forget to read and review, and have a lovely end of June! I'll see you all sometime in July, I guess!**

**~Erin**


	11. Ninjas of the Suburbs

**A/N: Just a quick thought for the beginning: The song I sing in this first bit of the chapter is "Goodbye" by Nine Lashes. It's not any kind of super-ultra-screamo-heavy, so if you wanna look it up and listen to it as you read, be my guest. C: Though I will say that the singer's voice might take a little getting used to. It's hard to explain. XD**

**Other than that, happy reading!**

Chaos Unleashed: Chapter Eleven

Erin's POV

I turned up the volume slightly louder on my laptop's speaker system and let out a relaxing sigh as I sang along. "And you came...for the thrill...hand outstretched, with lovely regret...in the back of my mind...in the back of my mind..." I leaned back in my desk chair and slowly focused in on the canvas before me, blocking out everything but the sound of one of my favorite Nine Lashes songs and the project I was working on. I hummed along quietly as I began the cycle of dipping my brush into the paint and carefully placing strokes of color where they needed to be. As the chorus hit, I turned it up another hair and sang louder. "You never leave...you will this time...Don't want to cry, but the time has come for you to die...to die..."

I continued my work to the slower rock song, singing along with passion in every note and meaning behind every movement of the brush. This room...this art studio was like a sanctuary for me. It allowed me to get away from everything for a few hours and just do what I loved to do best: sing and create. It allowed me to be expressive in every sense of the word; to get all my feelings out. I'd invested a lot of my time and personal savings into perfecting this room, and I thought I'd done a great job for a girl who only sold video games and painted for a living.

By the time I got to the bridge of the song, I was completely belting out the melody as I worked, getting deep into the project. "And now you're finally cold...Right here is where I belong...And now you're finally cold! Right here is where I belong! Oh!" The soft 'goodbyes' in the background of the chorus gave the whole song a slightly eerie feel as I sang the chorus one final time. "You never leave...you will this time...Don't want to cry! But the time has come for you to die! For you to die!" I let my voice die off of the last note as the instrumental ending to the song faded out as well, finally letting out a breath once I was finished. The next song to come on was "Take the Bullets Away" by We As Human, but I wanted to take a stretch break. I carefully placed the large canvas down on my desk where it could rest, then stood up and rolled my shoulders while looking around the room. I mentally took inventory of what I had in stock still, picking out certain paints and other things that I'd need to buy sometime.

I frowned as I noticed an empty gap on a shelf where a certain paint should've been. "Coral Blue..." I muttered, looking around for any signs of the bright shade. "Why is it that I'm always running out of Coral Blue?" I turned around to see if I'd accidentally moved it somewhere else and stopped when I saw someone peeking through the ajar door. "Legolas? What are you doing there?"

The elf didn't answer my question. Instead he chose to enter the room and stare at me in awe. "What is it that you were doing all this time?"

I suddenly felt awkward under his gaze. "Uh...m-my singing? Oh, I'm sorry...was it bad? I didn't know you were standing there..."

"No, it was fine," he reassured. "I was asking about that." He pointed around me to the artwork set on my desk.

I raised an eyebrow. "Oh, that? It's just a painting."

"May I see it?"

I looked back at him for a second, wondering what interest he could find in my mediocre art. "Sure." I reached behind me and grabbed the three foot by three foot canvas, trying not to smudge any of the wet paint on the large canvas as I showed it to Legolas. "It's not finished yet," I said, breaking the silence as his eyes ran over it. "I've still got a long way to go."

"If I may ask, who is this that you are painting?"

"It's one of my favorite bands," I answered. "Skillet. There's four of them; John, Korey, Jen, and Seth. I was hoping to hang it in my room somewhere when I'm done."

"And you...you painted this all yourself?"

"Yeah," I nodded with a nervous laugh.

Legolas finally stopped looking at the painting and up at me. "Teach me how to do this."

I blinked. "What?"

The elf suddenly looked ashamed. "Forgive me. I was too forward. I just...I would like to learn how you do this."

"What, painting? They don't have that back in Middle-Earth?"

"We do have painters," he said, "but not those who do things like this." Now he gestured to the entire room. "All I have ever seen of painters are portraits of royalty...of high kings and queens of different realms. But you do not paint and draw such things."

I shrugged. "No, I don't. I draw whatever comes to mind. I mean, sometimes people pay me to make specific things for them, but...other than that, it's whatever I want."

"Like this one." Legolas walked over to where I had an incredibly old project still up on the wall. It was another drawing of someone from a band, but the trick was that I was made entirely out of handwritten lyrics from their different songs. "How do you do this? It seems so interesting."

"You'd really like to become an artist?" I asked. "Have you drawn at all before?"

He shook his head. "Sadly not. But I am absolutely willing to learn if you would be my teacher."

I smiled at the compliment (and probably blushed, too). "I'm flattered, Legolas. Thank you. I'd be happy to teach you about art."

He grinned. "Wonderful. Can we begin now, while we have time?"

"Uh...sure!" I looked around, then had him sit in my desk chair. "Why don't we start with the basics?"

oOo

Kaia's POV

I grit my teeth as I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket for what must've been the twentieth time that day. I was almost done cleaning up after my shift at Spencer's, and was more than eager to go home.

It hadn't been a fun day at work, by any means, and this was mainly because of the fact that my bandmates wouldn't leave me the fuck alone. In the past few weeks, Trent had continued to be a complete asshole, even to the point where he'd canceled one of our gigs at the last second because he'd 'forgotten' that he'd made other plans with his buddies. We'd been constantly arguing lately, which had obviously taken its toll on me. I was supposed to be writing music with him for what could potentially be our first EP, and I was perfectly capable of doing so without Trent, but all the songs were coming out the same. Aggressive lyrics that were inspired by me wanting to rip his head off.

I took a second to open the new text from Jen and skimmed through it. Apparently she wasn't too happy with how I'd been dodging all our meetings and get-togethers lately, which I could understand, but still didn't want to deal with at the moment. _Not like it's my fault that I've suddenly got a ton of medieval dudes prancing around my house and shit._ I stuck my phone back in my pocket without replying (another thing that she'd yell at me for later, I'm sure) and did the last of my packing up before signing out and leaving the store, headed for my car.

As soon as I was inside, I cranked up the music and shot right out of that parking lot, blasting Three Days Grace in an attempt to get some of my frustration out. In all reality, I knew that I should be focusing on being the good guy and just backing off from arguing constantly, but it wasn't my nature. I was an aggressive, stubborn person, and I absolutely hated not having the last word in any kind of fight. I refused to give in just as much as Trent did, which put us at a stalemate until we could get something figured out.

I pulled up at a red light as a guitar solo kicked in, nodding my head in time to the beat. I really couldn't afford to get kicked out of this band, either. Money was tight enough as it was with eight extra bodies to take care of since the Fellowship had moved in, and though we'd been managing well enough so far, if I lost my position as a singer, we were screwed.

_I should probably go to one of these meetings they're trying to plan to get all this sorted out,_ I thought begrudgingly as I pressed down on the gas once more. _But I'd really rather not sit down in a room with the biggest dick in the history of bass players. _I groaned. _Why doesn't he just give up already and admit to his mistakes? _But I knew he wasn't going to do that. I wouldn't.

As I pulled up to the house and shut off my car, I shot a response to Jen's complaint. _Okay. We can have a meeting tomorrow, if that's cool with you and the others. But not at my house._

It was mere seconds before her response came, and I walked into the house with a frown as I read it. _Why can't we have anything at your house anymore?_

_ Oh, how I wish I could explain. _Instead, I settled for a more vague answer. _We've just got a lot of stuff going on here right now, and I'm pretty sure Erin and Kat would be pissed at me if you guys just popped up on our front doorstep._

As I took a deep breath and caught the strong scent of taco meat, her short, clipped response came back. _Fine. I'll see if we can do it at my place._

I stuck my phone into my pocket as I entered the kitchen, all my worries melting away momentarily as I saw what lay on the table. "Hell yeah! It's taco night!"

Kathryn glanced over her shoulder and smiled back at me. "Hey! How was work?"

I shrugged. "Same as usual. Hey, I might have to go over to Jen's sometime tomorrow for a band meeting. Everyone's pissed at Trent and I and they're insisting we have a talk."

She cringed a bit. "Good luck with that."

"Thanks," I mumbled. "I'll need it. Am I gonna be missing out on anything tomorrow?"

My dark-haired friend shook her head. "Not that I'm aware of. I'm pretty sure tomorrow's just gonna be a lazy day. Oh! But make sure you're still home when Erin and I are at work, ok? Just so they're not running around the house by themselves."

I nodded. "Got it. When's the food ready?"

"In like, thirty seconds. Do me a favor and go tell everyone there's food."

"'Kay."

oOo

Kathryn's POV

I stood at the kitchen sink after dinner, scrubbing off the remains of taco night before loading the dishwasher. Boromir had volunteered to be my helper so we could get things done faster, and he was a pretty enjoyable guy to chat with. He'd become more interested in all the different sports our world had more than anyone else, but not enough to be considered a jock. He also got into video games, particularly Black Ops and Resident Evil. I hadn't been able to get him into anime, though. Heartbreaking.

"So what do you have planned for us after these dishes are done?" he asked.

I glanced out the window. "Well, it won't be for a couple hours yet, cause it has to be dark first. Which reminds me! Wear dark clothes."

His brow creased in confusion. "Why?"

"You'll see. I can't really tell you anything; I swore I'd keep it a secret."

He sighed and shook his head. "I'm not sure how many more surprises I can handle from you."

"What, would you rather just sit around and watch TV all day?" I asked. "You enjoyed today. I can tell."

"That I did," he smiled. "Though next time I think we should all go to one of these baseball games I keep seeing on TV."

"You'd be going by yourself," I said. "There's no way Erin and Kaia would enjoy it, and I doubt we could get enough money to afford tickets for everyone anyway."

As he stuck a couple more plates in the dishwasher, he looked at me with a slight frown. "...Is money always a concern of yours?"

I continued rinsing the dishes off, but blinked at the random question. "Huh?"

"Is money always a concern?" he repeated. "I don't mean to offend, I just...You girls are always mentioning how you don't have enough money for this or that, and I just wondered why."

I sighed, thinking about how I wanted to answer that. "...Money's an issue for everyone in America right now," I said quietly. "Our economy's been spiraling downward for quite awhile now. Things are a lot more expensive than they used to be, and jobs that pay good money are really hard to find, so...lots of people don't have as much money for nice things anymore."

"Well, this house seems nice enough," he reasoned. "And for three girls that have small jobs without graduating from that college thing that you explained to me before...you seem to be managing well enough."

I nodded. "Yeah, I guess. It's just...it's hard. We always have to be super-careful about how much money we spend and being able to keep the jobs we have and all. I mean, if one of us were to ever get fired, I don't know what we'd do."

"Are all households like that in America?"

"No," I said. "Some people have millions and millions of dollars, and live in big fancy mansions without a care in the world. Some people are dirt poor and can't even get enough money to give themselves a proper meal."

"Well, it's good that you aren't in the latter situation, then."

"Yeah, I know." I handed him another dish and went to clean a bowl. "It's just one of those things that sometimes keeps me up at night, you know? Thinking about the worst-case scenarios and all that." I looked over at him with a small smile. "I guess it wasn't like that in Middle-Earth, huh?"

Boromir shook his head. "Not in the way that you put it. Of course we had the rich and the poor in different realms, but we were not in an economic crisis of any sort. Though I can't say I know too much about Gondor's economy, honestly. Faramir always paid attention to that, not me." He chuckled to himself a bit, but it quickly died away.

I paused in my washing as a distant look came over him. "...You miss him, don't you?"

He sighed. "Yes. I worry about him and my father. They must be worried sick if they know that I'm gone. And Gondor...I hope they're all doing well." He looked back at me. "I feel awful knowing that I can't be there to protect them if Sauron were to make an attack against us. Minas Tirith could completely fall into ruin, and I would never even know."

I felt so bad for Boromir as he talked. He loved his country and people so much, and you could see his longing to return home in his eyes. "I'm sorry, Boromir," I said. "I know Erin was trying to do research to see if we can get you guys home the other day, but she couldn't find anything." Immediately, I regretted saying it, because he looked even more upset. I set my dishcloth down and stepped over to hug him, which he allowed. "We won't keep you trapped here forever. I promise," I said quietly.

"Thank you." We let go, and he offered a small smile. "Though I have to admit, you've made my stay here much more enjoyable."

"Well, I'm glad," I replied, then turned back to the sink. "Now let's get this job finished up."

oOo

Erin's POV

I was crouched down low to the ground, my back pressed against the rough bark of a tree that stood towards the edge of our house's property. It was nearly pitch-black outside, and my mind raced as I tried to formulate a plan of action, all while staying as still and silent as possible.

To end our day, we'd set up a little game that I'd learned at a summer camp several years ago. There were two teams, Runners and Crouchers. The objective for a Runner was simple; you were to begin at the starting point by picking up a square of neon green paper from Frodo, then maneuver your way through the darkness of the night and back to my side of the house, where there was a cardboard box sitting on the dining room table. Once you reached it, you dropped the paper in, and it counted as a point for your team. Then you just ran back to the start, got another paper...rinse and repeat. The Crouchers, however, were the obstacle. They were charged with spreading out across the yard, each one armed with a sock full of baby powder to attack you with if they saw you heading towards the house in an effort to protect the box and prevent Runners from gaining points. Everyone wore dark clothes, and our yard had a few big trees and several bushes also occupying the space, so it was hard to spot your opponents for either team.

And this was my current dilemma. I had been hiding behind this tree for several minutes, occasionally peeking out to see if I could detect an enemy. I gripped the piece of paper tightly between my fingers and looked out again, hoping I wouldn't be spotted. The only safe area was inside the house. Once I got there, I would be okay, but getting there would be the trouble. I was up against Kathryn, Legolas, Pippin, Sam, and Aragorn, and I was never one known for being speedy. Granted, it might be easier for me to outrun the hobbits since they were smaller, but Lord knows what was in store for me if I was caught by Kat, the ranger, or the elf.

I squinted into the blackness, completely on edge. I could see the back door from here. The only light came from where the kitchen light was on inside, and even then the blinds had been pulled down to minimize the glow. You could only see a few feet away from the door before you'd be swallowed by darkness again. From what I could tell, I had a straight shot at that door from here, but running right for it was incredibly risky, because that made it easy to be seen and heard. I had been trying to slink my way around the edges of the yard and get closer to the door that way, and so far it had been working well.

Suddenly, I saw a dark shape shift off on the edge of my vision. I immediately tensed and trained my eyes on the shape, trying to determine who it was. A second later, a bigger, much faster shape sprinted right past it, running right up to the door and slipping inside without being caught. I smiled to myself. _Boromir._ He'd caught on pretty quickly, and was a fast guy. It was difficult to catch him.

I looked to the rest of the yard again, deciding on a strategy. I waited in hiding until I saw another member of our team run for it – this time it was Merry. He soon got caught up in trying to dodge both Pippin and Sam, and I took this opportunity to use him as a distraction. I jumped to my feet and zipped past all three of the hobbits with a burst of speed, making it to the door just in time.

Once I was safely inside, I went to the window and peeked between the blinds to see what was going on. Merry had been hit by his redheaded counterpart and was walking back in shame, and I saw Sam slip off to cover a different area. I waited for another second before going to the dining room to drop my paper into the box, smiling when I saw at least six papers also laying there.

Just as I was about to turn and walk away, I heard the door open and them slam shut as someone else came flying in. There was also a dull thud against the side of the house, and I turned to see Kaia panting a bit, then cracking a smile as she spotted me. "Nice job, man."

I nodded, then gave her a quizzical look. "What was that about?"

"Aragorn," she replied. "Son of a bitch almost had me. I guess he tried to swing for me but hit the wall instead."

I laughed as she dropped her paper in after me. "Well hey, you made it. Any idea where the rest of them are? I haven't seen Kathryn or Legolas for awhile."

"Yeah," she said. "Kathryn's crouched by the two trees near our side of the house. She hit Gimli there earlier, and maybe Boromir. I have no idea where Legolas is. Damn elf being all sneaky and shit," she muttered at the end.

I grinned. "Gotcha. I think Sam went around to the left side of the house, and Pippin's still parked in front of the door here, so be careful. How much longer do we have to play?"

Kaia pulled out her phone. "Like, twenty minutes."

"Okay. Good luck."

She nodded back at me as we walked to the door. "Same to you." With that, we'd slipped out and were back at the starting point in a matter of seconds. There was no talking once you hit the outside.

I grabbed another paper from Frodo with a smile, then immediately set off to find another place to plan. Eventually I decided to work my way over to a line of bushes that was sort of meant to separate the two yards from each other. Kaia had said Kathryn was over here somewhere, but she and I were pretty evenly matched when I came to running. I figured I could just stealth my way past her.

Sure enough, I was able to make out her dark form once I crouched behind the first bush. She was on the left side of them, prepared for anyone who tried to run through her and Kaia's half of the yard. _Simple, then. I'll just head down the other side of the bushes. _I got as close as I could on the ground, essentially moving on all fours to sort of crawl past her, peeking through the bushes now and then to make sure she was still there.

I got about three quarters of the way down the line when I stopped to check and make sure that no one out in the open field was nearby. I didn't see anyone, so I then looked back to where Kathryn was. Only...she wasn't there. I froze and squinted, peering harder through the leaves. _Where did she go? _I looked to see if she was chasing anyone nearby...but I didn't hear anyone running. It was silent, just as it should've been.

My paranoia spiked, but I tried to still focus on the mission ahead of me. _Relax, Erin, relax. She probably just went off to guard another area. _I turned forward again, and had just started to crawl when...

"...Honk."

I froze again and whipped my head around. _What was that?Did...did I just hear..._I slowly shook it off as nothing and continued on.

"...Honk."

I stopped again. _Frick...she knows I'm here. _My eyes slowly scanned in front of, beside, and behind me, but I didn't see anyone. _Weird. It sounds like she's right next to me. _

"Honk honk honk!"

Now I narrowed my eyes in a glare. _Okay, what's up? I hear her. I know it's her. Where is she? _I turned and peered through the bushes one last time. _Maybe she's honking at Kaia instead of me. _I moved a leaf out of the way so I could see straight through...

...and nearly screamed when I saw a pair of deep brown eyes staring back at me. "Honk."

I flinched away, but it was no use. Within moments Kathryn had scrambled over the bush and was on top of me, smacking me in the leg before I could get my feet under me and run. A puff of white powder when up into the air, and I sighed as I leaned back on my elbows, admitting defeat. "All right, you got me."

She laughed as she stood up with me. "I guess you could say I..._trolled_ you."

"Die," I laughed as I jogged back to Frodo.

When I got there, I was surprised to see Merry and Gimli coming up also, both quite dotted with baby powder. "Who got you?" the dwarf asked as I looked at them.

"Kathryn," I said. "You?"

"Aragorn and Sam," he growled lowly. "I was ambushed."

"Pippin keeps singling me out!" Merry complained. "I'm pretty sure he hasn't hit anyone else this entire time!"

I laughed. "We're almost done, guys. Just a couple more minutes to go." I looked around to make sure no one was nearby, then pulled them aside under the branches of the biggest tree in our yard. "I've got a plan," I whispered. "I'm gonna try and sneak around to the front of the house, then head in the front door." I smirked. "They'll never see it coming."

Merry frowned. "You can do that?"

"Hey, all we said in the rules was that you couldn't leave the property," I said. "It was never said that the front yard is off-limits."

Gimli grinned, his eyes twinkling. "I like the way ya think, lass!"

I returned his smile. "Wish me luck." With that, we broke apart, and I started working my way over to Kaia and Kathryn's yard, aiming to go around that way.

It was pretty difficult getting over there to begin with. I almost ran right into Kathryn again, and I actually _did_ collide with Boromir as he came running around a tree I was hiding behind. Thankfully, no one caught us, but it was enough to make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up for several minutes straight.

After several close calls, though, I was out of the backyard and on the right side of the house that I needed to be. There was a streetlight further ahead that cast an extremely faint fluorescent blue-white glow over the yard, but it was just enough for me to see that no one was back here. Finally feeling relieved, I stood up and started walking normally, satisfied with my genius plan.

I didn't get to far, though, before things went all wrong. I thought I heard noise behind me, so I immediately stopped and spun around, but saw nothing. Fearing the worst, I stayed there for a couple seconds, watching. And then I heard a rustling noise _above _me, which genuinely freaked me out.

When I turned back around and looked up, I was just able to watch none other than Legolas drop down from where he'd been hiding in the tree above, landing right in front of me, powder sock in hand. He smirked triumphantly when he saw the fear that was probably written all over my face. "Sorry, am I interrupting?"

I tried to play it cool, though not once did I take my eyes off of him. "So is this where you've been the whole game? Stalking me? I should've known."

He laughed. "Stalking? I did not have to stalk you to find out you were going this way." I quickly put two and two together and cursed myself in my mind. _He was in that tree. He heard everything. _"It was never said that the front yard is off limits, after all."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "You're a sneaky one, Greenleaf. I'll give you that." At this point, I'd begun to subtly back up. My mind was spinning. I needed another plan, fast.

"I am also the faster, and you know it." I didn't reply, continuing to retreat. "You can try and run back, but I can still-"

In the blink of an eye, I was off. But not running backward like he expected. Instead I ran straight to his right, doubling back at the last possible second to leave Legolas swinging at nothing as I switched over to his left, moving as fast as I could. I praised the Lord Jesus Almighty that my last-second plan had actually worked; I didn't think I would've been able to fake him out like that.

As I tore around the corner and into the front yard, I heard Legolas gaining on me. I ran to Kaia's car and ducked behind it, momentarily taking a breath as he stood looking over at me from the other side. "Smart," he complimented. "I should have realized you wouldn't give up so easily." He smiled a bit.

"I always was a fighter!" I joked before bursting into action again. I tried faking him out a second time, shifting left, then right, then way left again. Legolas copied my movements exactly for a few seconds before he got fed up with my stalling and decided to vault himself over the hood of Kaia's car, swinging his sock around as he jumped. I yelped and jumped out of the way, bumping into Kathryn's car behind me and moving away just as his sock hit the window where my head would've been. I ran around the car with Legolas hot on my tail – or so I thought until he jumped out in front of me, his eyes wild with excitement.

I screamed a bit again and just barely managed to move aside as he tried to hit me, running around him and bounding up the stairs to the porch. I felt my hand close around the door handle, but then gasped as I felt his strong hand on my shoulder as he ripped me away and pushed me back against the wall.

We stood there for a second, with me breathing heavily from both running and being a bit flustered. "Well?" he asked, a teasing smile on his lips. "Are you going to give up now?"

I feigned a defeated look, waiting until his stance over me relaxed before I dropped it and shot him a devilish grin. "Never!" I ducked under his arm and slung the door open, ducking inside before he could catch me. _Yes! Finally!_

...Or not. Just as I turned to taunt him, Legolas came running inside, still wielding his sock. "I will have you, one way or another!" he yelled. I screamed again, though this time I was much more of a laughing one as he chased me around the living room, trying desperately to hit me with his sock.

Now that we were in the confines of a much smaller area, I had less room to run, and he hit me several times with the thing before I decided to give up, turning around to face him. "Okay Legolas, I-"

I was rewarded with a sock to the stomach and a massive amount of powder puffing up in my face.

After a bit of a coughing fit and Legolas apologizing through his giggles, I frowned. "Thanks."

He still laughed. "I did not expect you to turn around!"

My eyes looked to the box of powder socks that I'd left sitting on the coffee table near the area where Gimli, Merry, and Pippin's things were being kept. I smirked and ran over to grab one before he could stop me, immediately turning on him and backing him into a wall where I rained powdery justice down upon him repeatedly.

"Yeah! How do you like it?" I laughed.

He responded by slipping out of my grasp and running into the dining room. "Not at all, actually!" I laughed, and we continued to run around, trying to beat each other senseless with the socks.

Eventually we wound up outside again, sending everyone else into a fit of laughter as they watched us run around the yard smacking each other. Our fun was only put to a stop once Legolas turned and swung his sock incredibly hard, causing it to tear open and fling all the powder that had once been in the sock right at me. I found myself choking on dust again as I spit and tried to wipe it out of my mouth.

Legolas was laughing so hard, I swear he must've had tears in his eyes. When I looked down at myself, I understood why; I was completely white across my chest and some of my face. "Look what you did!" I exclaimed.

He still struggled to control himself. "You...you look so ridiculous!"

I squinted at him as the elf still snickered at me. "You want something to laugh at? I'll give you something to laugh at!" With that, I promptly walked right up to him and dumped the contents of my sock right on his head.

Now it was me laughing as the elf coughed and wiped baby powder out of his eyes. "What in the name of the Valar was that for?"

"That'll teach you not to laugh at me," I winked. We both smiled at that.

The game quickly ended after that, and us Runners ended up with a total of eleven points. Not bad, if I do say so myself. Though Kathryn and Kaia were kinda upset when they saw white splotches all over my house's dining room, and upset was a nicer word to describe Merry, Pippin, and Gimli's reactions to seeing their living area also terrorized. Needless to say, the elf and I spent the remainder of our night cleaning.

It was after midnight when we finally finished cleaning the baby powder out of the house and headed upstairs to properly shower. I still couldn't take him seriously with his ghost white face, and I'm sure I looked no better in his eyes. "That was great," I laughed as we came to the top of the stairs. "Easily the most fun I've had since you guys have started living here."

"I believe I can say the same," he smiled. "Though I'm not sure it was worth all the cleaning."

I laughed again. "Oh, it was totally worth it for me." He just rolled his eyes and, ever the gentle-elf, offered the shower to me first.

oOo

Some time later, I was sitting at my desk in my room, wearing a fresh pair of pajamas and my recently-dried hair all fluffy and poofy as it fell about my shoulders. _I never did like how frizzy it is..._ I tugged at a lock of it. _That'll be fun to straighten in the morning._

The sound of an opening door caused me to turn and see Legolas come into the room in a slightly oversized t-shirt and gym shorts. "Hey," I said casually before getting up to turn the room's air conditioner on.

He nodded to me in response before making his way over to his bed and settling down. "What are you doing?"

"Just taking care of a couple things before I go to bed. Watching YouTube videos...you know."

"Are we doing anything tomorrow?"

"Not that I know of," I said. "I have work in the morning, though, as usual."

I looked over at him as I closed out of the internet and shut down my laptop. He exhaled and leaned back in his bed, staring up at the ceiling for a moment before his piercing blue gaze flicked to me. "That is nice, I suppose. Will we continue my lessons tomorrow as well?"

I smiled. "Of course." It absolutely thrilled me that Legolas was so interested in becoming an artist, especially considering I was the one to inspire it. I couldn't wait until he got really good at it...and he had potential to be really, _really _good at it, I was certain. "But I might be home a little late tomorrow. I gotta pick up some stuff from A. C. Moore that I've run out of."

He nodded. "Very well. Goodnight, then."

"Night," I replied as I flicked out my light and crawled into bed.

oOo

Legolas' POV

Though I was thoroughly exhausted by the events of the day, I found myself unable to fall asleep for quite awhile after Erin turned out the lights. She had no trouble succumbing to her dreams, as I heard her breathing slowly and deeply within ten minutes. I did not mind it much, though. It gave me time to myself. To think.

As I shifted position to stare out her window at the stars, my mind recalled all the events of our celebration day, and even more before that. I will admit, I was surprised with myself for being able to adjust and find comfort in living here with the girls so quickly. I had not expected things to be as easy as they were. Kaia, Erin, and Kathryn were incredible hostesses, and I was glad that we had landed in their home instead of someone else's.

For all the enjoyment I had here, however, I could not shake the feeling of homesickness that I had felt slowly creeping over my shoulders the past few days. I often found myself thinking of my home, my father, my other friends back in Mirkwood. Would they know that our Fellowship was gone? Would they presume us to be dead? I hoped not. I knew my father would not handle it well if news reached his ears that I had fallen, or even gone missing.

I glanced back to Erin again. I wondered how much closer they had gotten to finding a way to return us home. Secretly, I suspected that they had done little research, but I understood why. They had to adjust to a new life just as much as we did, and they needed time before things would go back to normal again. Even so, it bothered me that we seemed to have gotten nowhere in our efforts to return home, and a nagging feeling was beginning to stir in the back of my mind about it. It was not until recently that I had began to wonder what would be happening without the Fellowship continuing their quest. I prayed that nothing was going terribly wrong, but it was still something to consider.

_Although, _I thought as I turned back to the window, _we have not really been gone that long. And I doubt the Valar would have placed us in the hands of these women without reason behind it. _I sighed quietly as my mind began to drift, the pull of sleep quickly overtaking me. _Perhaps it is nothing to worry about._

**A/N: Wooooo, this one's a reeeeeeeeeeeally long chapter! XD I honestly didn't expect it to go this far...I guess I got a bit too into this one. ^^; And yes, there is a Homestuck reference thrown in there for any fellow fans that may be reading. C: Haha, hopefully you enjoyed this one!**

**Also...Legolas POV? WHAAAA?!- Just kidding. You knew it was coming, didn't you? XD**

**Don't forget to review!~**


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